A group of 16 leading players in the field of telecommunications are joining forces to advance the development of a new air interface below 6 GHz for 5G networks under the project named “FANTASTIC-5G” (Flexible Air iNTerfAce for Scalable service delivery wiThin wIreless Communication networks of the 5th Generation). 

The focus of the 2-year FANTASTIC-5G project is to develop a new multi-service air interface that operates below 6 GHz frequency for 5G networks, and is:

• Highly flexible, to support different types of data traffic.

• Scalable, to support an ever-growing number of networked devices.

• Versatile, to support diverse device types and traffic/transmission characteristics.

• Energy- and resource-efficient, to better use the available spectrum.

• Future-proofed, enabling easy upgrades to future software releases.

Future mobile networks need to become even more flexible and efficient than 4G, 3G and 2G networks to cope with the ever-growing demands being placed on them. As consumer smartphone and tablet devices become more diverse, and as the Internet of Things brings with it a huge increase in the amount of sensor-related traffic, a new air interface – which connects a user´s device to the mobile network and defines the way information is transmitted to and from the device – for 5G is required.

FANTASTIC-5G has received eight million Euros of funding by the European Commission under the EU´s “Horizon 2020” initiative aiming to advance digital Europe.

The members of FANTASTIC-5G include service providers (Orange, Telecom Italia), component and infrastructure vendors (Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, Samsung, Sequans Communications, Wings ICT Solutions), universities (Aalborg University, Politecnico di Bari, Institut Mines-Telecom/Telecom Bretagne, University of Bremen) and research institutes (Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives - Laboratoire d’électronique et de technologie de l’information (CEA-Leti), Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institut (HHI)) from Europe.