Telecom network vendor Huawei announced that it will be investing £5 million in the University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) in Guildford, England.
Huawei’s £5 million investment in the 5GIC will be a part of the earlier committed $600 million for 5G research and innovation by 2018.
Tong Wen, CTO of Huawei Wireless Networks, said: “Our work with the 5GIC at the University of Surrey will enable us to test cutting-edge, fifth-generation mobile technologies in an open and collaborative environment, and help to turn the vision of 5G into a reality.”
The Chinese mobile equipment supplier and other partners will be testing 5G in real-time scenarios at 5GIC, an independent facility. Huawei said 5GIC will have the world’s first 5G test bed, based at the University’s campus.
Huawei, one of the founding members of the 5GIC, has provided expertise and equipment for large scale radio access for the test bed.
The test bed will be built in three separate phases. As per the plan, the first phase will be operational by April 2015 and will be used by 5GIC researchers and telecom industry partners to develop and test 5G technologies.
The first phase of development will focus on initiating and verifying a cloud-based radio access network for an ultra-dense network demonstrating unprecedented capacity to end users. This will lead to the verification of the new waveform designed for 5G, including sparse code multiple access (SCMA), said Huawei.
The test bed is expected to deliver a live 5G network covering the whole of the University of Surrey campus, providing 17,000 students and staff with the latest communications technology. The plan is to demonstrate 5G technologies before 2018.
