LuxTurrim5G Ecosystem Partner in spotlight
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is one of Europe’s leading research institutes owned by the Finnish state with the task to advance the utilisation and commercialisation of research and technology in commerce and society. Through scientific and technological means, VTT turns large global challenges into sustainable growth for businesses and society. VTT’s research is guided by the goals of climate action, resource sufficiency, good life, safety and security, and industrial renewal. LuxTurrim5G Ecosystem research touches all of the aforementioned themes. VTT’s research and development focus is especially on 5G telecommunication systems and networks as well as positioning solutions.
Concerning 5G telecommunications, VTT with its partners Nokia, Aalto University and Premix has developed millimetre-wave frequency radios in the activity. This activity aims towards future needs, when the 5G frequencies are foreseen to include above 60 GHz frequencies. VTT has a long tradition in the development of millimetre-wave technology. Traditionally, the monikers 2G, 3G, etc., have related to mobile telecommunications especially, but generation by generation other functionalities have been added.
“Now, 5G is thought to encompass everything from wireless communications to massive sensor and device networks, and enable autonomous traffic, object tracking and generally smart homes, cities and factories. But the radios are still very much at the heart of 5G”, explains Jussi Varis, who is responsible for VTT’s radio development task in the activity.
The ever-increasing amount of mobile devices and mobile data traffic requires more sophisticated radio solutions in the base stations and access points to enable good connectivity. In LuxTurrim5G, VTT builds 71-76 GHz radio front-end units that have electrical beam steering capabilities meaning that, for example, access points can find the direction where the wireless signal is coming from and keep tracking the mobile device to maintain the best possible signal strength.
Preparing VTT’s robot car for a test in Nokia’s Karaportti campus
The LuxTurrim5G smart pole concept represents one manifestation of the above-mentioned need for adding new functionalities in 5G, required by industry verticals. VTT has been involved in the development of the so-called connectivity platform prototype with Nokia, Teleste and Vaisala – mainly in the areas of architecture, protocol, and API design, service orchestration, device management, network virtualization, and security. VTT has also applied video analytics by experimenting with various machine learning frameworks and hardware accelerators of different form factors. In the Luxturrim5G Ecosystem, data streams from the various sensors deployed in the city infrastructure are routed to local computing engines at the edge of the network. There, in the connectivity platform, the data is stored, aggregated, analysed, anonymized, merged into mashups, and eventually offered for public view in local display devices or handed over to higher-tier data platforms.
VTT researchers preparing a drone for a test flight in Karaportti
“The design, development, and prototyping work, in the highly fragmented IoT landscape, has paved the way for the partners to internalize the challenges and solutions in building secure, dependable, scalable, and interoperable edge cloud and management services in the 5G environment”, summarizes Tapio Suihko, who leads VTT’s connectivity platform work.
The LuxTurrim5G+ project develops and prototypes forthcoming smart city services utilizing the smart pole infrastructure. Within the topic, VTT develops and pilots smart logistics and drone based smart city services in close collaboration with Indagon, RumbleTools, Nokia, Teleste, and Vaisala. The research has involved field trials to test different positioning, sensor, and communication technologies to support automated vehicles, robots, and drones in urban environment. Some of the investigated new technologies are 5G, C-V2X, Wi-Fi FTM, 60 GHz Wi-Fi, UWB, RTK/INS, lidar, and 60 GHz radar. The work involves development of positioning algorithms and analysis methods for assessing wireless communication QoS and positioning accuracy.
“The LuxTurrim5G+ infrastructure offers a ready testing facility to experiment with new types of smart city services in the real environment. Information from the infrastructure and various types of users is used for enhancing automated traffic and smart logistics, for improving collision avoidance and pedestrian safety leading to more fluent traffic and better air quality in urban areas”, says Seppo Horsmanheimo, the leader of VTT’s activities in smart logistics and drones services piloting. All in all, the LuxTurrim5G+ project has defined a large list of potential smart city services to be developed and experimented on at the LuxTurrim5G pilot environment.
The work is also closely linked to the sister project Neutral Host Pilot focusing on commercialisation of smart city services. In the sister project VTT studies emerging data business and data markets in the smart city context. Data markets could motivate the utilisation of data that otherwise stays in silos and improved communication networks create new possibilities for value creation in the markets. “Future 5G networks with reliable high-bandwidth and low-latency communication capabilities enable new real-time applications and services, e.g. related to traffic. Timely services require automated data markets where devices and software components sell, buy and use data automatically without human involvement in order to accomplish critical tasks in a timely manner”, says Ville Kotovirta, the leader of VTT’s activities in the Neutral host project.
Read more about VTT: https://www.vttresearch.com/en/about-us/what-vtt
5G and future networks: https://www.vttresearch.com/en/topics/5g-and-future-networks
Millimetre wave technologies: https://www.vttresearch.com/en/ourservices/millimetre-wave-technologies
Mobile networks: https://www.vttresearch.com/en/ourservices/mobile-networks