RESEARCH GOAL

MiEdge, Millimeter-Wave Edge Cloud, is composed of the following key technologies.

1. mmWave Access & Backhaul: Develop transmission schemes and protocols of mmWave access/backhauling aimed to assist the mobile edge cloud with caching/prefetching so as to realize ultra-high speed and low latency service delivery, resilient to network bottlenecks, such as e.g. backhaul congestion, users’ density, mission-critical service deployment, assuming three target scenarios: stadium, office, and train/station.
2. Liquid RAN C-plane: Develop novel ultra-lean and inter-operable control signaling over 3GPP LTE to provide liquid ubiquitous coverage in 5G networks based on acquisition of context information and forecasting of traffic requirements, in order to enable a proactive orchestration of communication/computation resources of the mmWave edge cloud.
3. User/Application Centric Orchestration: Develop user/application centric orchestration algorithms and protocols to adapt radio and computation resources of mmWave edge cloud in 5G networks by utilizing traffic forecast provided by liquid RAN C-plane to enable self-organized and proactive reservation of the resources and satisfy low-latency service requirements.

Work package 1

Scenario/use cases, business model, and 5G architecture and ecosystem

This Work Package (WP) defines the use cases, scenarios, and an extended 5G architecture and derives related requirements to be worked out in the other WPs. Also it analyses the impact of the project on the existing business models in the wireless communication markets.

Work Package 2

Millimeter-wave edge cloud for 5G RAN deployment paradigm

WP2 develops not only mmWave physical layer design, but also sophisticated resource allocation (including MIMO and coordinated beamforming), ultra lean signaling/control plane for mmWave AP management, mmWave AP deployment design etc. In addition, in order to efficiently use the capacity of mmWave access for mobile users, mmWave backhauling with caching/prefetching must be developed.

Work Package 3

Design of 5G liquid edge cloud for user/application centric orchestration

WP3 develops a new interoperable control plane and control signaling to support multi-layer and multi-connectivity. Moreover, edge computing is supposed to be deployed with prefetching and caching functions to deliver desired contents to user terminals with low latency. Therefore, a new control plane is also required to support on-target delivery of contents between users and edge cloud.

Work Package 4

5G System Evaluation and Proof of Concept

The outputs of WP2 and WP3 will be combined within this WP to provide a proof of concept in respect to the scenarios and use cases defined in WP1. This WP includes 5G system performance evaluation of the enhanced by the MiEdge concepts using system level simulation tools and real world field tests in the 5G Berlin Testbed for indoor and outdoor.