As the EU aims to make 5G available across Europe by 2020, a two-year, €5 million research project has began in Trinity that will work towards developing higher-speed internet.
The research, which is funded by the EU, will be partly led by Trinity’s Prof Luiz Da Silva, the Chair of Telecommunications at Trinity’ School of Engineering and a principal investigator at Connect, which is based in Trinity. The centre, which is leading research on a range of areas including the Internet of Things and communication technology, is funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), and currently links together 10 Irish universities and research institutions and aims to develop and design new methods of telecommunication.
In a press release, Da Silva, who will lead Ireland’s contribution to the project, said: “This research is urgent. The Internet is already under immense pressure as it struggles to cope with user demand. The growing popularity of Internet television and on-demand video means wireless technology must find new ways of delivering much faster speeds.”
The project will see the research team at Connect work with fellow researchers across Europe and will run until the end of 2019, with collaborators working in a range of countries including Belgium, Switzerland and Germany. The overall project, Orchestration and Reconfiguration Control Architecture (Orca), is one of the most ambitious projects the EU has undertaken and will see Trinity receive €560,000 in funding from the project.
“Until now, some of the leading ideas for the future of wireless Internet have been examined only with theoretical simulations. This project will allow us to test these ideas experimental”, De Silva said. The EU hopes to be able to offer download speeds of at least 100 megabytes per second to all households and make 5G available commercially to all member states by 2020.
De Silva is one of the leading principal investigators in Connect, and has already received nearly €2.3 million in funding from the EU across seven telecommunications research projects. The centre itself has already proved incredibly successful, and has received nearly €13 million in EU funding since it was established in 2015.
In a press release, Prof Linda Doyle, the Director of Connect, welcomed the funding. “This is another vote of confidence in Irish-based research. The telecommunications testbed developed by Professor DaSilva’s team in Trinity College is among the best in the world. It is a premium resource and, coupled with the expertise of our researchers, allows Ireland to compete successfully at an international level for prestigious research awards like this”, she said.
