Key Facts

• Horizon 2020 – Call: H2020-ICT-2014-2
• Topic: ICT-14-2014
• Type of action: RIA
• Duration: 30 Months
• Start date: 1/7/2015

Project Scope

The exponential growth of mobile traffic, drastically increasing of network complexity, and the strong need for inter-network coordination of wireless network resources call for breakthroughs in control, coordination and flexible spectrum management in 5G heterogeneous radio access networks. The COHERENT project aimed to address these problems by researching, developing and validating a novel control framework for future mobile networks. The key innovation of COHERENT was to develop a unified programmable control framework to coordinate the underlying heterogeneous mobile networks as a whole.

The COHERENT control framework had two unique features to deal with the insufficiency of control solutions for inter-network coordination. First, theories and methods to abstract the low layer network states and behaviors of different underlying mobile networks were developed, which provided a simplified but sufficient abstracted network view for network-wide control and resource coordination. Network abstraction significantly reduced the signaling overhead, making scalable network-wide control solutions feasible, and enabled more flexible spectrum management, which was key for the success of 5G networks. Second, based on the abstracted network view, common interfaces and software-development kits were developed to enable programmability in controlling and coordinating heterogeneous mobile networks. The programmable control provided operators a flexible and cost efficient way to implement new control functions and thus to support new services. The innovative impact of the COHERENT project was in enabling a unified control and coordination framework for heterogeneous mobile networks by combining innovative approaches on abstraction of low layers in underlying mobile networks, software defined networking, and flexible spectrum management. COHERENT built a true proof-of-concept prototype to demonstrate the applicability and benefits of its approach.

Project Consortium

• Teknologian tutkimuskeskus VTT Oy (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland) FI
• EURECOM FR
• CREATE-NET (CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND TELECOMMUNICATION EXPERIMENTATION FOR NETWORKED COMMUNITIES) IT
• AALTO-KORKEAKOULUSAATIO FI
• SICS Swedish ICT AB SE
• EUROPEAN CENTER FOR INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES GMBH DE
• THALES COMMUNICATIONS & SECURITY SAS FR
• COMMAGILITY LIMITED UK
• UNIVERSITAET DUISBURG-ESSEN DE
• HELLENIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS ORGANIZATION S.A. – OTE AE (ORGANISMOS TILEPIKOINONION TIS ELLADOS OTE AE) EL
• GOLDHAMER MARIANA IL
• POLITECHNIKA POZNANSKA PL
• INEA SPOLKA AKCYJNA PL
• FAIRSPECTRUM OY. FI