Next Generation Network Infrastructures

The FOKUS competence center Next Generation Network Infrastructures (NGNI) develops future communication technologies offering seamless access to services and applications related to various application domains. Our team of skilled scientists combines profound technical know-how of telecommunication technologies and service environments for backend systems and mobile devices with creativity and innovation for the creation of flexible and advanced communication infrastructures for Telecom operators and Smart Cities.

In the FOKUS Future Seamless Communication (FUSECO) Playground, the NGNI experts develop future network infrastructures based on the 3GPP Evolved Packet System (EPS), Software Defined Networks (SDN) for human-to-human (H2H) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. The FOKUS OpenEPC offers an open, extensible toolkit for academia and industry researchers and engineers around the world to obtain a practical look and feel of the capabilities of the Evolved Packet Core (EPC). The FOKUS OpenMTC toolkit provides a standard compliant middleware platform for M2M oriented applications and services. The well-known OpenIMS environment and accompanying toolkits provide the base for Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and carrier-based, integrated Rich Communication Services (RCS). Access and control services of the FUSECO Playground may be provided to integrated operator or Over-The-Top (OTT) services.

The FOKUS Smart Communications Playground focuses on the provisioning of (tele-) communications service capabilities for H2H rich communications and M2M services based on state-of-the-art Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles. The main focus is on the provisioning of innovative and advanced services based on a high reuse of generic service platforms, communication and connectivity interfaces for various service verticals. Platforms and toolkits of the Smart Communication Playground may act on top of state of the art network operator environments, represented by the FUSECO Playground, or as OTT service enablement environments. The following figure provides an overview of the provided NGNI playgrounds and related toolkits:

Our key technologies are OpenEPC, OpenMTC, OpenIMS, Open Communication Server, Telco Communicator Suite and WebRTC Telco Stack. Additionally the topics of 5G networking, flow-based routing and networking, dynamic spectrum management and cognitive networking are addressed.

NGNI is one of the most active contributors to Europe’s Future Internet Research and Experimentation Initiative (FIRE), as well as to Europe’s Future Internet Public Private Partnership Programme (FI-PPP). In the context of FIRE, we utilize state-of-the-art federation tools to expose our testbeds to Europe’s research community for testing and experimentation. In the context of the FI-PPP, several of our solutions are being used to realize the Future Internet Core Platform, which enables a broad range of Usage Areas (eHealth, Smart Transport, Smart Energy, Smart Cities, etc.).

NGNI strongly cooperates with the department for Next Generation Networks (AV – Architektur der Vermittlungsknoten in German) within the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Faculty of the Technische Universität Berlin in the context of Master and PhD student education and research and development related to the above mentioned software platforms.