Project Summary
An IMT-Advanced key requirement for next generation systems is the support for unprecedentedly high throughputs per user. This implies an infrastructure – composed of access and backhaul network – capable of supporting the resulting high capacity densities. The current next-generation technologies LTE and WiMAX support a mere 100 Mbps/km2 in ordinary cellular deployment. This is insufficient, in particular in dense urban areas where the market demand for wireless broadband access is the highest, thereby seriously jeopardising the wide scale uptake of IMT-Advanced technologies.
BuNGee’s goal is to dramatically improve the overall infrastructure capacity density of the mobile network by an order of magnitude (10x) to an ambitious goal of 1Gbps/km2 anywhere in the cell – thereby removing the barrier to beyond next-generation networks deployment. To achieve this objective, the project will target the following breakthroughs:
- unprecedented joint design of access and backhaul over licensed and license exempt spectrum;
- unconventional below-rooftop backbone solutions exploiting natural radio isolations;
- beyond next-generation networked and distributed MIMO & interference techniques;
- protocol suite facilitating autonomous ultra-high capacity deployment.
To evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches, a high capacity radio cell prototype will be built targeting over 1Gbps/km2 . It shall serve as proof-of-concept in real life scenarios and demonstrate the superiority of BuNGee’s architecture for mobile networks. Indeed, the live-testing of BuNGee's full system will be achieved using three different scenarios:Low buildings in a low-density area (University campus of UPC, Castelldefels, Barcelona province), Medium size town, low rise buildings in a medium density area (town centre of Castelldefels, Barcelona province), and Downtown Barcelona.
The developed technologies will be proposed as new standards for high capacity radio access networks, mainly to ETSI BRAN and IEEE 802.16 and/or LTE-Advanced, to maximise the exploitation benefits in Europe and globally.
This strong consortium, composed of a network operator, equipment, antenna vendors, research institutes, universities and a consulting firm is committed to achieve these goals and serve as a baseline for beyond next generation ultra-high capacity systems.
