Three universities in the United Kingdom are to combine their 5G research as part of a new £16 million testbed aiming to trial an end-to-end 5G system.
The partnership, involving Bristol University, King’s College, London and the University of Surrey, has been financially backed by the British government.
A new hub will be connected across the three university sites, with initial end-to-end testing slated for next year. New partners will be able to join the hub from 2018.
A unified test bed between the three universities will develop new solutions for the operation and management of 5G networks.
Bristol University, which already runs the Bristol is Open smart cities project, will continue to explore this use case as well as the convergence between 5G and fibre infrastructure. It will also develop software defined networking and showcase media, transport and gaming applications.
King’s College, which has been collaborating with Ericsson on 5G research, will explore ultra-low latency 5G applications, as well as smart cities, transport, the arts and health.
The University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation Centre will continue its work on researching 5G radio technologies, a fully virtualised core network at the 3.5GHz and 700MHz band, as well as ultra-low latencies.
[Read more: 5G bands could be shared in future, claims university researchers]
Professor Rahim Tafazolli, Director of the 5GIC at the University of Surrey, said: “It is really exciting to be collaborating with our colleagues to develop this national asset that can mobilise intense testing and trials for mobile broadband as well as other applications such as connected and autonomous cars, new games, connected health and many more applications.”