Project Portfolio

The project portfolio serves the NGMN Alliance’s objectives and working principles and supports the achievement of the main priorities as agreed by the NGMN Board.

For 2021 and beyond, the NGMN Alliance’s priorities are to evaluate and to drive technology evolution towards 5G’s full implementation and in addition three major focus areas:

  1. Route to Disaggregation with a Focus on the E2E Operating Model
  2. Sustainability/ Green Future Networks
  3. 6G

The NGMN Alliance e.V. project portfolio is continuously adapted to meet these priorities.

Mastering the Route to Disaggregation

Operating Disaggregated Networks (ODiN)
Network Disaggregation E2E Operating Model

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Project Lead:

  • Carlos Fernandes, Deutsche Telekom

Project co-Leads:

  • Javan Erfanian, Bell Canada
  • Lennart Olaivar, Smart

Objective:

The NGMN Alliance aims to lead in MASTERING THE ROUTE TO OPEN, DISAGGREGATED, VIRTUALISED and CLOUD NATIVE SOLUTIONS.
The objective of the project is to focus on the END-TO-END OPERATING MODEL. It will consider, amongst other, the following key aspects: processes, technology/tools and skill requirements. It also aims to providing guidance towards the industry players on the roles and opportunities provided by disaggregation.

The team has now published its first two deliverables:

Phase 3 of the project is anticipated to run from late 2022 to mid-2023 and will translate the network and process impacts into end to end operating model options, their pros/cons, main decision criteria and blueprints.

Network Automation and Autonomy Based on AI

Project Lead:

  • Sebastian Zechlin, Deutsche Telekom
  • Lingli Deng, China Mobile

Project co-Leads:

Sebastian Thalanany, UScellular

Objective:

In order to realize the transformation from network automation to autonomy through AI technology, the NGMN Alliance will further conduct network autonomy technical requirement analysis and implementation architecture research on the basis of network automation platform in this project.

From the perspective of technical requirements and ecological requirements, in-depth discussion is performed on how to use open industrial cooperation models to consolidate industry consensus, unify technical routes, R&D reference implementation, formulate industry standards, and promote the network from automation to autonomy.

The first deliverable from this project was published on 14 November 2022.

Sustainability/Green Future Networks

Green Future Networks

Project Lead:

  • Saima Ansari, Deutsche Telekom

Objective:

Society awareness of the fact that resources are not inexhaustible is leading to new behaviours and demanding that companies become more responsible. Mobile technology is an essential tool for economic and social development, but it is also an industry that has environmental impacts (contribution to climate change, depletion of natural resources, energy consumption, etc.).

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now becoming a major issue for telcos in general and for their ecosystem.

Furthermore, one of the biggest technical challenges arising in the last years for operators is to stabilize or even reduce their energy expense despite of the increase in the data traffic and the network deployments. The motivation behind this ambition are of paramount importance since they go from the responding to the CSR demands to making business cost-effective.

To prepare for the next standards and next generation we need to be able to accurately measure the environmental impact of services.

The new French law that obliges operators as of the first January 2022 to “inform their subscribers of the quantity of data consumed in the context of providing access to the network and indicate the equivalent of the corresponding greenhouse gas emissions” shows that this topic begins to be an obligation and not simply something convenient to have.

To provide an answer there is the need to take into account the full life cycle of services, including the devices used to access to them. This means developing a holistic analysis considering also, inter alia, the emissions a company is responsible for outside of its own walls, from the goods it purchases to the disposal of the products it sells and uses.

Last but not least, electricity consumption is the operational expense that will probably continue to increase and it also represents the operators’ principal source of greenhouse gas emissions. Increasing the green techniques enabling a more energy-efficient network, is fundamental since the number of customers and the usages continue to grow, which implies an increase of the network’s energy consumption.

The IT network consumes the most energy in the content delivery process. That is the reason why a greater effort in terms of next generation energy efficiency as well as identifying the network parts consuming the most is fundamental.

We need to anticipate changes in the adoption of current digital products and services as well as the demand for more virtuous practices such as low-digital consumption. To do so there are two major areas to cover, the end-to-end services footprint and the eco-design of products. Moreover, the new mechanisms introduced by 5G improve the energy efficiency of networks and optimize their carbon footprint. These techniques can be further studied and exploited.

Finally, the use of on-board metering will allow to better identify the energy-intensive parts of the network in order to optimize them.

The project has already published the following deliverables:

The project is now working on the next phase with a focus on the way forward for operators towards Green Networks with

  1. Supply Chain Circular Economy Criteria
  2. Reducing Environmental Impact
  3. Network Energy Efficiency Phase 2
  4. Definition of KPIs and Methodologies for Green Networks Benchmark

6G

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Project co-Leads:

  • Quan Zhao, China Mobile
  • Narothum Saxena, UScellular
  • David Lister, Vodafone

Objective:

  • Deliver 6G vision, drivers, use cases and end-to-end system requirements from operators’ perspective and provide timely guidance to the industry
  • Play a key role in avoiding fragmentation of 6G standards and ecosystem to achieve affordable deployments
  • Identify a set of high-level business drivers including social responsibility aspects and MNO operational aspects
  • Develop requirements by taking a customer centric view
  • Engage with different stakeholders, monitor external 6G activities and facilitate bilateral exchange with external organizations at the right time
  • Identify and analyse relevant SDO’s and industry organisations to ensure most effective impact
  • Collect 6G information and views

News:

The project has already published the following deliverables:

The project team is currently working on 6G End-to-End requirements.

Supporting 5G’s Full Potential

5G Trial and Testing Initiative (Phase 2)

Project Lead:

  • Yue Hao, China Mobile

Objective:

  • Phase 2 of this project will build on the work of 5G TTI, extending the driving forces and test activities with an increased focus on 5G evolution
  • The NGMN Alliance will give guidance to the development of the 3GPP standards on Release 16/17/18
  • We will enable global collaboration of testing activities to ensure the development of globally aligned 5G evolution technology

5G Architecture Option 4 for 5G Standalone

Project Leads:

  • Raimund Walsdorf, Deutsche Telekom
  • Peter Stevens, Deutsche Telekom

Objective:

The commercial introduction of 5G started with deployments of New Radio (NR) technology based on the Non-Stand-Alone NW architecture (NSA), also known as “Option 3X” or EN-DC, which always requires an underlaying LTE carrier and connection to a 4G EPC. However, the full set of 5G benefits will only be realized once a new 5G Core NW (5GC) is introduced, enabling new 5GC-based services as well as providing 5G Stand-Alone (SA) operation, without dependency on LTE to act as an underlaid master technology.

This NGMN project intends to elaborate the advantages of Option 4 and to demonstrate the potential in an Option 4 field trial.

Network Slicing For Operating Systems of 5G Smart Phones (Phase 2)

Project Lead:

  • Danni Song, China Mobile

Objective:

As a joint project with GTI, the project aims to facilitate the progress or pre-commercialisation of 5G network slicing.

The project has already published the following deliverables:

Base Station Antenna Requirements (Active Antennas)

Project Lead:

  • Bruno Biscontini, Huawei

Objective:

The project team published release 1 of their White Paper in April 2020. The document contains

  • Electrical & mechanical key performance parameters
  • Digital data exchange of specifications
  • EMF exposure mechanisms to monitor & control RF power
  • Specification & testing of mixed passive-active systems using mechanical integration kit

Work on release 2 of the White Paper was kicked off in May 2020. The team preliminary agreed to work on the following topics:

  • EMF field trials, field tests of counters
  • Test modes
  • FR2 AAS (mmWaves)
  • GPS sensors.

In September 2021 the project team publised their deliverable: Recommendation on Base Station Active Antenna System Standards.

Base Station Antenna Requirements (Passive Antennas)

Project Leads:

  • Hans Obermaier, Huawei
  • Jürgen Rumold, Ericsson
  • Roberto Vallauri, TIM

Objective:

The result of the project on Base Station Antenna Standards is an Implementation Recommendation which helps the telecommunication industry to establish industry-wide accepted antenna standards for the benefit of its customers.

The scope of the project is to:

  • Collect existing base station antenna standards
  • Develop specific recommendations on standards
  • Update the currently existing Whitepaper

A subgroup on wind load and related topics has been defined, which currently works on parameter and method definition.

5G IPR Forum

Project Lead:

  • Serge Raes, Orange

Project Co-Load:

  • Dao Tian, ZTE

Objective:

  • The NGMN Alliance IPR Forum is a unique platform to engage with relevant industry partners in order to discuss present-day licensing practices and related issues across different industry segments. The IPR Forum is focusing on the development of 5G and beyond
    • to promote a licensed 5G ecosystem,
    • to  improve the transparency of Standard Essential Patents (SEP) declarations to 5G SDOs,
    • to build trust on essentiality checks in Standard Essential Patents (SEP) declarations to 5G SDOs,
    • to adapt and expand the patent pooling, and
    • to address the emerging need for software licensing in the mobile industry and, in particular, as regards Open Source.
  • The work is done in consensus with operators, contributors and advisors.

In continuation of the past IPR activities and in line with the Business Objectives of the first NGMN Alliance White Paper in 2015, the IPR Plenary has focussed on formulating recommendations related to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in 5G.

The agreed 4 recommendations have been integrated into the chapter 7 of the second NGMN Alliance White Paper which was published recently. All four recommendations are intended to support the 5G ecosystem:

  1. 5G products and applications on the market should be adequately licensed and appropriate measures should be considered to enable the ecosystem to distinguish between licensed and unlicensed products;
  2. 5G SDO should consider requiring each patent holder member to declare timely to the SDO its potentially essential patents (SEP) and at least to declare the member’s licensing position for its SEP, and that the SDO makes these received declarations publicly available not later than upon publication of the adopted standard and anyway shortly after receiving them;
  3. a certain level of trust should be built among the industry players; this may be achieved if a SEP is subject to some kind of essentiality check(s) before being reported with its declaration, which may be updated afterwards; and
  4. patent pool administrators are encouraged to pursue a dialogue with the SEP holders, prospective licensees, representatives of the various regulators, and themselves in order to explore and build new ways of providing sustainable patent pooling services that seek to address and benefit the 5G ecosystem.

The NGMN Alliance will continue to provide with its IPR Forum a platform where the likely concerned parties – possibly including SDO and patent offices – may anticipate and address the potential issues in an open and inclusive manner.

The NGMN Alliance will engage into further activities related to essentiality checks of declared SEP, e.g. with the European Commission after publication of their report of their pilot project on essentiality checks.

This project is currently dormant.

Security Competence Team

Project Lead:

  • Xiaoting Huang, China Mobile

Objective:

The team is currently working on 6G Trustworthiness Considerations.

The team has already published the following deliverables: