Mobile Edge Computing for 5G DROne Systems (Micro5G)

Funding Source: Service des médias et des communications (SMC)

Research Team: Prof. Symeon Chatzinotas (PI), Dr. Jorge Querol (VPI), Dr. Shree Krishna Sharma, Dr. Jorge Querol, Dr. Nicola Maturo, Prof. Miguel Olivares Mendez (Co-PI), Dr. Jose Luis Sanchez Lopez, Dr. Carol Martinez-Luna, Dr. Abhishek Bera

Prime Contractor: SnT, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Project Start Date: 14/01/2021

Project End Date: 13/01/2023

Project Description:

5G and beyond wireless communication systems are expected to have a wide impact across many ICT-based verticals including the fast growing drone industries. Drone applications have been steadily growing in the support of a number of innovative vertical applications, such as health, logistics, transportation and public safety. In order to support such applications, 5G research communities and standardization bodies have focused along two main technological enablers, namely, Ultra Low Latency and Reliability Communications (URRLC), and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). However, the current 3GPP release for 5G has mainly focused on enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) services and most of the advanced technological enablers such as URLLC and MEC are planned to crystallize only during the later releases.

In the above context, MICRO5G focuses on industrial research on URRLC and MEC with the objective of acquiring news skills and knowledge related to the deployment and support of drone services in 5G and beyond applications. URRLC will allow drone service providers to extend the flight time by reliably moving complicated processing tasks to the mobile edge. In parallel, MEC will support crowdsourcing data from multiple drones, which can be consolidated and utilized as a traffic management tool. The synergy out of combing these capabilities shall not only enable innovative services such as safe flight beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) and dynamic guidance/geofencing, but also promote an interactive, rather than independent, integration of different 5G technologies. In summary, this industrial-oriented research targets to bring a significant improvement in the existing drone systems by utilizing emerging URLLC and MEC technologies to support storage/processing offloading, and dynamic geofencing and guidance scenarios.

The main objectives of Micro5G include the following.

• Define use cases and network requirements for 5G drone applications 
• Demonstrate the feasibility of URRLC for drone applications in 5G systems 
• Demonstrate storage/processing offloading in MEC-enabled 5G systems 
• Demonstrate beyond LoS Drone control – 5G-assisted Dynamic Geofencing and Guidance
• Facilitate existing network operators to implement their strategy in terms of 5G RAN planning and deployment.
• Disseminate results and provide input to stakeholders

Relevant Links:

• 5G-Sky
• IRANATA

Contact:

Prof. Symeon Chatzinotas

 

This project was co-funded by the Department of Media, Telecommunications and Digital Policy