"Softwarization" of hardware and networking functions

This comprises areas such as network-function virtualization (NFV), Cloud or Virtual Radio-Access Networks (CRAN), Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC).  This is a key area of research identified for developing the networking architectures for future 4G and 5G systems. It is one of the pillars defined in the 5G framework laid out by the NGMN Alliance. Specific collaboration efforts include the FP7 Mobile Cloud Networking Project, and the National RADIS and ELASTIC projects.  The lab also contributes to the 5GPPP (H2020 ICT-14) COHERENT project focusing on SDN and MEC in RAN and building a proof-of-concept prototype for a true programmable and sliceable RAN based on OAI.  EURECOM, in collaboration with Canonical who is the distributor of the Ubuntu Linux distributions, has brought openairCN into Canonical’s  JuJu orchestration framework for OpenStack.  This collaboration aims at a fully open-source demonstration of LTE-based NFV at the 2016 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.