NEC to help create a smart 5G campus for Spain’s University of Murcia
NEC Ibérica and NEC Laboratories Europe are teaming up to construct a smart campus network for the University of Murcia in Spain. The platform will offer students and researchers a chance to experiment with 5G technology, data spaces based on Fiware technology and an enhanced IoT ecosystem designed to help the university save energy.
Fiware is an open-source technology framework that enables the creation of smart solutions and federated data spaces. Fiware allows students and researchers to use open-source, IoT building blocks for their work. They will comply with ETSI NGSI-LD, the European Union’s industry standard for context information management.
NEC and its partners will install a private, all-purpose 5G system on the university’s Espinardo campus. It will provide hands-on experience for students studying 5G networks, edge computing, data spaces and IoT ecosystems. Researchers will also have access to the 5G technology research space. The system also promises benefits to administrators in terms of efficiency and productivity.
“We are looking to explore the development of solutions beyond the current conception of smart cities and infrastructures,” stated Antonio Skarmeta, the strategic project coordinator at the University of Murcia. “We want advanced, future solutions that can integrate dynamic and intelligent systems and adapt to the needs of each user. Our smart campus platform is an integral part of this vision.”
Edge computing is key to the successful deployment of the private 5G system, which includes network slicing and edge cloud orchestration. These technologies safely release university research projects onto the network and control network resources.
Ernö Kovacs, the senior manager of data ecosystems and standards at NEC Laboratories Europe, explained, “Without network slicing, you cannot properly isolate different user groups and they might conflict.”
NEC collaborates with other team members to integrate edge computing extensions into the university’s smart campus, private 5G system and IoT framework. A management and orchestration (MANO) framework is also essential to the 5G IoT ecosystem.
The university smart campus network will also include the Cloud City Operation Center (CCOC). It can monitor energy use in real-time and help manage the compute energy of its buildings. They have designed this information system to reduce the university’s carbon footprint by conserving energy when necessary.
CDTI, Spain’s Centre for the Development of Technology and Innovation, spearheads the “Distributed Computing Intelligence” smart campus project. The intelligent campus network is a joint effort between the University of Murcia and specialist domain technology providers, funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
“It is both a pleasure and a huge challenge to manage this ambitious project because it combines several core technologies of the future: artificial intelligence, advanced 5G networking and distributed computing,” stated Hicham Chiker, the project manager at NEC Ibérica. “By creating a working system that uses these, we are providing a reference for future initiatives in the same direction.”
Article Topics
5G | data management | Fiware | IoT | MANO | NEC | NEC Laboratories Europe | power management | private wireless
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