MONTREAL — A team from Montreal’s INRS (Institut national de la recherche scientifique) has been using its unique simulator to participate in the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) evaluation of new proposed standards for 5G.
INRS presented the results of its evaluations of various candidates’ Radio Interface Technology (RIT) specifications at an ITU meeting in Geneva in February 2020. To be approved by the ITU, 5G technology standards must meet a set of criteria known as IMT-2020 (International Mobile Telecommunications-2020), and several countries and consortiums of companies are proposing RIT as a new standard for 5G.
For the past two years, professor Sofiène Affes (pictured second from right) and his team at the INRS have been mandated by ISED Canada and the Canadian Evaluation Group (CEG) to evaluate 5G technology. The ambitious project started in August 2018 when the team designed a simulator to test candidates’ specs as thoroughly as possible.
“We simulated a virtual environment with a 5G cellular network that has the same characteristics as a real network. It’s the most complex and comprehensive approach for evaluating candidates,” said Affes, in a news release today.
“Thanks to our expertise in the field, we are the only Canadian academic institution, with involvement of the University of Toronto, to be mandated by ISED to participate in this ITU process through CEG and alongside Bell Canada, Ericsson Canada, InterDigital Canada, Rogers Communications and Telus. This is not the first time my team has been involved in evaluating candidates for new standards. We did the same thing for 4G and IMT-2000 about ten years ago,” added Affes.
Venkatesh Sampath (pictured first on right), a senior consultant at Ericsson Canada and a member of the CEG who coordinated the overall work, said: “The CEG is very thankful to Professor Sofiène Affes and his two doctoral students — Mr. Souheib Ben Amor and Mr. Oussama Ben Smida — for having carried out the evaluation work related to the IMT-2020 evaluation process. Their simulation was essential in generating the results that went into the final CEG evaluation report — on the basis of which discussions are still ongoing within the ITU.”
The evaluation work done by the INRS team will help the ITU make recommendations on the protocols and structures of these new emerging technologies by the end of the year, says the news release.
(Pictured left to right: Serge Bertuzzo from Bell Canada, students Souheib Ben Amor and Oussama Ben Smida, professor Sofiène Affes, and Venkatesh Sampath from Ericsson Canada.)
