5TONIC

The 5TONIC laboratory, offers a 5G end-to-end facility comprising infrastructure and equipment to support advanced experimentation in the 5G virtual network function and wireless systems areas.

• Three use cases for 5G EVE project are planned for this facility:
  • Industry 4.0: The use case intends to demonstrate the feasibility of centralizing the control of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) operating in complex manufacturing environments and relying on wireless connections between the vehicles and a centralized control unit close to the network edge. This centralization (in contrast with the distributed approach used today) allows for more intelligent decisions to be taken (e.g., taking advantage of artificial intelligence) and may also enable a more flexible and reconfigurable factory.
  • Smart Tourism: these use cases aim at transforming the experience of participants in events, meetings, presentations, both for professionals and the general public, with the aim of expanding and improving their interactions by leveraging VR and 5G technologies. This will be possible thanks to the immersive qualities of 360º video in real time in conjunction with 5G technology.
  • Media & Entertainment: This use case includes three (adaptable) multimedia scenarios. Ultra High-Fidelity Media experience with highly immersive viewing experience and ultra-crisp, wide-view pictures will be made possible through the use of both linear (e.g. live programming, streaming) and non-linear (e.g. on-demand) content. To guarantee this high quality of experience, the network should be able to support efficient network management high speed transport capabilities and strategies, e.g. by means of local and network caching of content.

• The access network comprises 5G-ready equipment, commercial LTE-A base stations implementing different functional splits, and Software Defined Radio (SDR) systems, supporting communications in a variety of frequencies.
• The 5TONIC lab has one datacentre with a total of 24 racks, with 4 racks currently devoted to 5G-EVE activities. The lab has 2 rooms that can be used either for development/testing or showcasing and technical staff to install and configure all devices. The remote access of 5TONIC is provided by means of an OpenVPN with credentials per trial.
• The core network is created upon the principles of virtualization, including SDN/NFV infrastructure where virtual EPCs are deployed for creating network slices. An HSS performs authentication of the devices accessing the 5TONIC network. Management and Network Operations is implemented using OSM (currently version 4) for the service and network orchestration, OpenStack for the virtual infrastructure management (VIM) and OpenDayLight (ODL) for the SDN assisted part.

• Each project hosted at 5TONIC benefits from a number of common and specific tools for testing and validation
• The consolidated testing suite for 5TONIC, from 2019 onwards, adopts 5G EVE testing framework baseline (please see www.5g-eve.eu)

• Secure access (physical and remote) to the lab facilities is provided to 5TONIC full-members, and also to vertical collaborators (subject to a formalization of a collaboration accession)

• Industry verticals (public, private, SMEs) willing to test their 5G-ready applications in and E2E 4G+5G lab