The EU-Taiwan 5G Workshop was held in Taipei in early June to share the status and outlook of EU-Taiwan 5G collaboration including Targeted Opening Call and participation in international 5G standards. Participants including DG CONNECT officials and experts from ITRI, Ericsson, Nokia, Foxconn, and MediaTek gathered to discuss the global trends of 5G technology development.
As a global leader in setting 5G technical standards, the EU has attracted worldwide partners to join R&D work in its Horizon 2020 program. Pertti Jauhiainen, a program officer on EU policies, indicated that the 5G PPP initiative under this program is driving 700 million euros of government funds and 3.5 billion euros of private investment into Europe, which may result in 20% of 5G Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) and 35% of global market share on 5G network equipment. 5G Infrastructure Association Chairman Werner Mohr expressed that this initiative not only focuses on access convergence technology, but is also expected to revolutionize sectors such as manufacturing, energy, healthcare, media, and automotive industries.
In 2015, Taiwan and the EU agreed to adopt the targeted opening call as a means of forging 5G cooperation. This platform allows EU units and Taiwan partners to participate in teams, leveraging Taiwan’s advantage in 5G research and testbeds as well as EU’s R&D results, to develop an integrated convergent access across different air interface technologies. The research is expected to provide even more advanced methods of verification and larger deployments in the process of jointly setting international 5G standards.
ITRI has been playing a vital role in Taiwan’s 5G system planning. According to Dr. Tzi-Cker Chiueh, General Director of ITRI’s Information and Communications Research Laboratories, at the moment, Taiwan has six proposal ideas for the EU-Taiwan targeted opening call ICT-08-2017 part b.
The proposal ideas include:
- 5G RRH Platform, OTA Measurements and Multi-RAT Deployment Tool
- Highly Coordinated Ultra Dense Network
- 5G Mobile Edge Computing
- Integrated Convergent Access for Massive MTC in Factories of the Future
- Convergence of 5G/IoT/G5 for the SeaPort of Things
- Real-Time Virtualization Infrastructure for NFV Applications
Dr. Chiueh stated that this targeted opening call is significant because it is Taiwan’s first time to work with the EU as equal partners at a time when 5G global standards have not yet been established, as opposed to past efforts which often came too late, after standards establishment was well underway. The EU’s decision to collaborate with Taiwan reaffirms Taiwan’s strength in IC design and manufacturing capability. Seizing this opportunity, Taiwan will be able to compete in the global 5G community and occupy a pivotal position.
source: ITRI TODAY 86