Second ORCA Open Call for Experiments - ORCA-OC2-EXP

Deadline: Nov 30, 2018  
CALL EXPIRED

The ORCA project hereby announces its second Open Call for Experiments.

This call solicits for Experiments for rapid validation of innovative software defined radio (SDR) solutions using the facilities, SDR hardware platforms and software toolsets supported by the ORCA Consortium.

More information on the scope of this second Open Call can be found in Section 4 of this document.

Financial information:

Call budget
€ 350 000

Scientific Excellence ORCA-OC2-EXP-EXC
Max. budget per experiment
€ 50 000

Expected No. of experiments to be funded
3

Guaranteed support1
€ 28 000

Innovation by Industry ORCA-OC2-EXP-IND

Max. budget per experiment
€ 50 000

Expected No. of experiments to be funded
4

Guaranteed support1
€ 28 000

Expected number of experiments to be funded
7

Requirements related to the proposer:

• ●  Proposers must be eligible for funding in H2020 projects

• ●  Proposals will only be accepted from a single party.

• ●  A proposer can only be selected for funding for one proposal, even if the proposer submitted multiple proposals that are ranked high enough to be selected for funding. In the latter case, the proposer may be given the opportunity to choose the one to be retained for funding.

• ●  Parties having been selected for funding in previous ORCA Open Calls are not eligible to participate again.

• ●  For the Experiments in the category ‘Innovation by Industry’, only proposals from small, medium and large size enterprises, including unipersonal companies and individuals, will be accepted. The ORCA project encourages in particular the participation of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) and unipersonal companies. Proposals submitted by SMEs or unipersonal companies will receive a bonus in their score.

Other conditions:

• ●  Language in which the proposal must be submitted: English

• ●  Proposals must follow the provided template (see Section Error! Reference source not found. of this document and Appendix A)

• ●  Proposals (draft as well as final proposals) must be submitted through the online submission portal (accessible from http://www.orca-project.eu/open-calls)2

3.Project background

End-to-end network functionality is best conceptualized using the 5 layer OSI model, that naturally splits the complete functionality into well-defined layers, where each layer is responsible for a well-defined set of tasks. SDR functionality typically focuses on the lowest layer of the OSI, model, emulating a full or partial physical layer on a reconfigurable platform. The advantage of SDR over “off-the-shelf” technology is that it enables a full and open implementation of all low layer functions, enabling innovation everywhere. The disadvantage is however that implementing a full PHY layer is quite complicated, and for a very long time the real-time execution of the PHY layer functionality was only possible for the slowest and simplest technologies, such as IEEE 802.15.4.

Recently, SDR technology is improving, and more and more HW-accelerated SDR functionality is becoming available. As a result, SDRs can even be used for some very high throughput and advanced 5G technology, such as Massive MIMO or mmWave. In parallel, open, reconfigurable and real-time MAC protocols are emerging. As a result, SDR PHY and MAC layer technology is becoming mature enough to start considering the concept of networked SDRs.

The ultimate goal of the ORCA project is to enable wireless experimenters to unlock the potential of reconfigurable radio technology, by setting up complex experiments involving end-to-end applications that require control of multiple novel technologies or cooperation between multiple networked SDR platforms within 5G (or beyond 5G) performance constraints on latency, reliability or throughput, well before new radio technologies become available on the market in commercial off-the-shelf products.

3.1. The ORCA Project

The ORCA project is a Research and Innovation Action under the European Horizon 2020 Programme addressing the work programme topic Future Connectivity Systems. The project started in January 2017 and runs for 36 months, until the end of 2019.

The ORCA ambition is to enable end-to-end SDR networking by building SDR networks consisting of multiple SDRs, in various configurations, running multiple functionalities.

Referring to the ORCA Architecture which is shown in Figure 1, the ORCA project aim is to:

• ●  identify novel wireless data plane functionality from PHY to network layer and implement it in SW or HW so that real-time end-to-end 5G experiments are enabled;

• ●  identify novel control and monitoring functionality, together referred to as control plane functionality, to enable smooth orchestration of the functional blocks. This means controlling functional blocks that are pre-loaded on the SDR, and can be controlled at runtime by updating parameter settings through an appropriate interface;

• ●  identify novel reconfiguration and orchestration methods to upgrade or modify the

ORCA SDR functionalities at runtime or design time.

• ○  Concerning design time, the project focuses on composition, by selecting appropriate PHY and MAC functional blocks and perform fundamental changes on the transceiver chain at system level.

• ○  Related to runtime, the project focuses on (1) parametric configuration, (2) on the fly composition of PHY and MAC chains in the radio stack, and (3) live (partial) hardware and software reprogramming by on the fly loading novel PHY and MAC functional blocks or updating existing PHY and MAC functional blocks

For more technical information about the ORCA project please visit the ORCA website (https://www.orca-project.eu/), and refer to overview video tutorial of the ORCA project (https://www.orca-project.eu/resources/video/) the already published deliverables (https://www.orca-project.eu/resources/deliverables/)

3.2. The ORCA consortium

The consortium is composed by seven partners with complementary competences and demonstrated capability to provide a solid contribution to the project:

• ●  imec (IMEC, ORCA Project Coordinator).
  Inter-university Microelectronics Center (IMEC) is a world-leading independent research center in nano-electronics and digital technology. IMEC's uniqueness relies in the combination of a widely acclaimed leadership in microchip technology and a profound software and ICT expertise. In ORCA, the IDLab research group of IMEC in Flanders in involved. IDLab focuses its research on internet technologies and data science. IDLab develops technologies outperforming current solutions for communication subsystems, high speed and low power networking, distributed computing and multimedia processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence and web semantics. IDLab has established many open lab and real-life test environments and offers access to the hardware, measurement equipment, user-friendly software tools and professional technical expertise needed to efficiently prototype, develop, and test innovative ICT innovations. In ORCA imec brings open platforms offering advanced runtime PHY and MAC reconfigurability and live reprogramming capabilities for software-defined radios.

• ●  Trinity College Dublin (TCD)
  TCD was founded in 1592 and is among the oldest universities in western Europe. It is recognized as the premier university in Ireland. CONNECT is Ireland’s leading research centre in Future Networks and Communications, jointly funded by the Science Foundation Ireland and by industry. CONNECT is headquarted at Trinity College Dublin. The research efforts at CONNECT can be broadly described in four themes, namely the Internet of Things, the Service-Aware Networks, the Network-Aware Services, and the Integration and Testbeds. TCD brings extensive experience in intelligent reconfigurable radios and networks, and this expertise is used in ORCA on end-to-end network operation, and to contribute in the development of low-latency operation and reconfiguration solutions.

• ●  Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL)
  KU Leuven (KUL) boasts a rich tradition of education and research that dates back six centuries. KU Leuven is currently by far the largest university in Belgium in terms of research funding and expenditure (EUR 365 million in 2012), and is a charter member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU). The Electrical Engineering department at KU Leuven (ESAT) conducts research at a high international level. The division TELEMIC concentrates on telecommunications and microwave research, combining both strong theoretical, implementation and measurement expertise from electromagnetic propagation, antenna and RF circuit design, to telecommunication networks. In ORCA, the KUL testbed, consisting of networked real-time SDRs is made available. In addition, ESAT-TELEMIC exploits their mmWave expertise and test equipment, towards designing and realizing extensions of the Massive MIMO testbed towards mmWave.

• ●  Technische Universität Dresden (TUD)
  Founded in 1828, Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) is a full-scale university with 14 faculties, covering a wide range of fields in science and engineering, humanities, social sciences and medicine. TUD prides itself for its international flavour and has partnerships with more than 70 universities worldwide. Furthermore TUD is the only university in East Germany which has been granted a graduate school and a cluster of excellence in Germany’s excellence initiative. In ORCE TUD will further evolve its current testbed into a Fed4Fire compliant indoor and outdoor testbed. Main focus of the experimentation platform is on macro and small cell scenarios for low latency and tactile internet applications.

• ●  National Instruments Dresden GmbH (NI)
  NI is an industry partner in the ORCA project with a long history of designing and prototyping innovative test and measurement systems, e.g. in the RF space. Customers in nearly every industry—from healthcare and automotive to consumer electronics and particle physics—use NI’s integrated hardware and software platform. NI is also collaborating with several top researchers focused on wireless research—specifically 5G wireless communications and is also actively engaged in the 3GPP standardization. The strong expertise in RF and wireless communications will help to provide ORCA feedback on the latest technology trends and products that will lead to a better practical relevance of the results.

• ●  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (RUTGERS)
  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is the largest and most comprehensive higher education institution in New Jersey founded in 1766. Wireless Information Laboratory (WINLAB) was founded in 1989 as an industry-university cooperative research centre at Rutgers University focusing on wireless technology. In ORCA the WINLAB develops functionalities for massive MIMO and cloud RAN and improves support for various radio platforms that are available in ORBIT.

• ●  Martel GmbH (MARTEL)
  Martel is an innovative SME specialized in the management, dissemination, communication and promotion of international collaborative EC projects, with focus on ICT, Smart Cities and Future Internet. Martel leads the Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation work package playing a key role in the perspective of promoting the project outcomes and engaging a high number of experimenters in adoption of the ORCA’s concepts and technologies. Martel also assists IMEC in the management and coordination of the various project’s administrative activities.

3.3. The ORCA facility

One of the ORCA ambitions is to introduce advanced SDR functionalities in a number of Fed4FIRE compliant test facilities. The ORCA facility is the collection of wireless testbeds supported by ORCA hosting advanced SDR platforms, together with the code repositories and toolsets needed to generate ORCA SDR functionalities. The ORCA SDR functionalities and testbed are described in the next sections.

The ORCA SDR Functionalities

An overview of the main SDR functionalities supported in the ORCA project is given below. For more detailed technical information, we refer to Deliverable 2.2 (https://www.orca- project.eu/resources/deliverables/) the leaflets on the ORCA website (https://www.orca- project.eu/orca-functionalities/).

The ORCA functionalities that are offered in this open call are listed in the tables below. The first table focuses on a high-level description, while the second table focuses on the hardware and software components, supporting partner and licensing condition of a particular offer.

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