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Today, more than 80% of wireless data is generated or consumed in buildings, with increasing tendency. For future applications in the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the demands on the quality of service are increasing at the same time. Today’s 5G solutions are mainly designed for outdoor use and are unrivalled there. Solutions for 5G networking in buildings require an additional infrastructure, which is very expensive.
5G-COMPASS addresses this challenges with a new indoor network:
5G-COMPASS is developing a heterogeneous indoor RAN (i-RAN), based on low-cost, advanced LAN (IEEE Std 802.3) and WLAN (IEEE Std 802.11) components, which can be integrated into the 5G core network with an open interface, just like the conventional 5G RAN. These technologies specify only the physical and data link layer, which allows more flexibility in terms of architecture. They are desi- gned for the mass market and are comparatively inexpensive.
5G-COMPASS is developing new optical transmission methods for Fibre-to-the-Room (FttR) and opti- cal wireless communication (LiFi) very close to the application and the available technologies Power- line Communiation (PLC) and WLAN in such a way that they meet the requirements of advanced ap- plications in terms of data rate, energy efficiency, latency and user-friendliness.
5G-COMPASS pursues a disaggregated network architecture (Open RAN) with open interfaces and advanced control mechanisms for (W)LANs in order to use the available network resources more effi- ciently and to ensure a higher quality of service. In the long term, the approaches developed in 5G-COMPASS are intended to improve the performance of provider hotspots, corporate and home networks.
5G-COMPASS targets a seamlessly switch between technologies inside and outside buildings for the users.
5G-COMPASS contributes to creating a functioning innovation ecosystem in the field of building net- works, strengthening networking in German industry, exploiting economies of scale through coordi- nated contributions in standardisation, driving implementation forward, testing the technology in va- rious scenarios, strengthening Germany’s role in this network segment and enabling broad exploita-tion.
5G-COMPASS covers the predevelopment for a dedicated chipset for FttR and extends optical wireless transmission (LiFi) with higher bandwidth and sectorisation. For WLAN, the focus is on operating at new frequencies and improving quality of service.
5G-COMPASS is developing a fibre-based architecture. Buildings are increasingly being connected via fibre (Fibre-to-the-Home, FttH) to a central network node in the access network (Central Office, CO), which also provides access to the 5G core network. In the building, the wireless access points (AP) is be distributed more densely by connecting them via an optical FttR network in addition to existing technologies (Ethernet).