Menu

Menu controller icon

5GMediaHUB project kicks off and heads towards review

Posted: 30-08-2021

Author: Ryan McCloskey

Tags:

    It has been only a short few months since the 5GMediaHUB project kicked off in January of this year, but already we have been through plenary meetings and are fast approaching our first review in the latter stages of 2021. But what is 5GMediaHUB? In this post, we’ll dive into the details of the project, its aims, and how it’s been going so far. 

    But first, 5G itself. The 5G rollout is well underway across the EU and worldwide, bringing the next generation of mobile connectivity. The primary benefits of 5G can be simplified to a few key factors: higher speed, higher capacity, lower latency, and the possibility of implementing virtual networks to provide specific network adjustments to the needs of users. Each of these are critical to 5GMediaHUB, central to the entire project design process. 

    On to the project itself. 5GMediaHUB is a Horizon 2020-funded EU project with seventeen partner organisations across Europe, including the Walton Institute. The primary goal of the project is to aid in the development of 5G-powered media applications by offering a fully-featured experimentation facility providing testing and validation. It will offer an open cloud-based development and execution environment enabling the fast prototyping of 5G services and NetApps.

    5GMediaHUB focuses on three primary use cases to define the scope of the project based on the projected future of 5G-powered media applications.

    • Immersive Augmented, Virtual and Extended Reality applications: This use case focuses on immersive media technologies such as AR, VR XR, and interactive IPTV, and the evaluation of the capabilities in new digital media.
    • Smart media production: This use case focuses primarily on scenarios involving such challenging situations as dense uploads of high-quality user-generated video content and professional live video production.
    • Smart media content distribution: The primary objective of this use case revolves around the 5GMediaHUB Experimentation Facility, allowing media application developers to evaluate the impact of cross-domain media distribution on Quality of Service (QoS), and Quality of Experience (QoE).

    All of the 5GMediaHUB partners are currently working in close collaboration to realise these objectives and advancements in 5G media application development. Our work in the Walton Institute to date has been primarily in three key components of the project:  

    • NetApps Repository: The NetApps Repository is a re-usable, open-source catalogue of NetApps which offers cross-domain orchestration of NetApps for application developers.
    • Quality of Service & Quality of Experience Monitoring: 5GMediaHUB offers innovative experimentation tools, which includes monitoring mechanisms to determine the QoS and QoE delivered by media applications.
    • User Management Module: Keeping everything secure is the User Management Module, offering industry-standard single sign-on (SSO) with authentication and authorisation facilities.

    The project kicked off at the end of January, with a meeting spanning two days, including some great presentations from many of our project partners outlining plans and aspirations for the three-year project. Since then, we’ve concluded our first round of plenary meetings at the end of June, with a second on the way in the very near future, prior to the first project review towards the end of the year.

    There’s still a long way to go in the project, but we believe we’ve made great strides so far and hope to continue in the same manner. For more information and updates on 5GMediaHUB, keep an eye on the project website at https://www.5gmediahub.eu.