Leading companies and research organizations join forces in FANTASTIC-5G research project to speed development of a flexible air interface below 6 GHz for 5G networks

The “FANTASTIC-5G” (Flexible Air iNTerfAce for Scalable service delivery wiThin wIreless Communication networks of the 5th Generation) project will focus on boosting capacity, increasing flexibility and improving the energy efficiency of the next generation of mobile networks.

In 2020, we’ll be hitting a communications limit with 70 billion devices connecting to the network. To survive this, transitioning to the 5G network will be critical.
But what will this transition actually look like for both providers and customers? Currently, the instinct within the industry is to take a “kitchen sink” approach in order to remain competitive by gathering any number of oft-discussed technologies – machine-to-machine, MIMO, etc. – and packaging them under the 5G heading. From Alcatel-Lucent’s perspective, we should be looking at 5G’s potential to be the first transition in wireless where, instead of creating deeper division within the industry, the new technology serves as an umbrella that crosses radio access technology boundaries.

This type of industry sea changes takes both dedicated research in a number of area and participation in key industry consoritums, Fantastic 5G is one – but also one Nokia announced we were a part of in early July called 5G NORMA (Novel Radio Multiservice adaptive network Architecture) group, which is part of the 5GPPP initiative, will begin work this month (July) for a period of 30 months (https://5g-ppp.eu/5g-norma/). We have been very active in 5G in the last few months and expect our activity to continue over the summer.