International Researchers Pursue 5G Testbed

After a year of virtual collaboration, international and NIST researchers involved in a federated 5G Testbed development effort, called “Project Agility,” held a hybrid meeting at NIST's Gaithersburg, MD campus, May 16-18, 2022. Several researchers met in person onsite, and others participated virtually from France, Germany, Korea, and the US.

Project Agility seeks a federation of testbeds to further develop and apply 5G technology. The Project was launched by the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT), a quasi-governmental organization under Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, which supports industrial technology innovation and related policy development.  KIAT has welcomed NIST's participation; NIST has extensive experience in enabling frameworks for federations in cloud computing, cyber-physical systems, and more. Other participants include Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute in Korea, Mobigen Co., Korea Automotive Technology Institute, University of Arizona, and University of Missouri–Kansas City.

Project participants defined a development path leading to a 5G federation testbed that is representative of the various domains of assets and facilities required for such an ecosystem. They reviewed participants' core technologies and other existing technologies and determined how they might contribute to a federation testbed. A goal of this project is to enable end-to-end service innovation, orchestration, and agile delivery across the industry sectors. It also seeks to enable autonomic network and connectivity formations and orchestrations in response to agile service delivery needs or detected situations and predicted situations.

Project Agility will hold another in-person meeting in several months to further define the overall process and identify contributions and responsibilities of participating organizations.