The increasing demand of higher data rates while ensuring sustainability through reduced energy consumption levels call for a collective effort to define and set up the new generation of mobile communications. It is expected that some of the newly arising services will need to accurately map the environment for a seamless interaction of the physical and the digital worlds, and then require a combination of communications, positioning and sensing. The vision of MiFuture is that an evolution of massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO), the technique that has provided the unprecedented spectral efficiency of 5G, towards ultra-massive MIMO (UmMIMO), will be a key ingredient in the future mobile radio access network. MiFuture will pave the path towards the implementation of heterogeneous cell-free networks with an ultra-massive number of antennas that will satisfy the throughput, energy efficiency, positioning accuracy and feasible complexity requirements that the evolution of mobile communications towards 6G demands. This evolution will require a new generation of excellent researchers able to address the emerging complex engineering problems that the thriving area of mobile communications is facing. MiFuture will develop a high-level personalised multidisciplinary programme to provide 15 Ph.D. candidates, supervised by committed experts from industry and academia, with research competences and transferable skills (e.g., entrepreneurship, project management, IPR, open access) with the long-term goal to lead scientific advances in the new concepts arising in the field of wireless communications. These creative young researchers will face real world implementation, work across multiple European countries and organisations, become knowledgeable in standardisation activities, present at workshops in front of researchers and industrial stakeholders and interact with the general public to make them aware of how 6G can help in their daily lives.

There are two ongoing industrial trends, one in the mobile communications industry and one in the automotive industry, which are becoming interwoven and will jointly provide new capabilities and functionality for upcoming intelligent transport systems and future driving. The automotive industry is on a path where vehicles are continuously becoming more aware of their environment, due to a permanent increase in various types of integrated sensors; at the same time the amount of automation in vehicles increases, which – with some intermediate steps – will eventually culminate in fully-automated driving without human intervention. Along this path, the amount of interactions increases, both in-between vehicles, as well as between vehicles and an increasingly intelligent road infrastructure. As a consequence, the significance and reliance on capable communication systems for vehicle-to-anything (V2X) communication is becoming a key asset that combined with sensor-based technologies will enhance the performance of automated driving and increase further traffic safety. On the other hand, the mobile communications industry has over the last 25 years connected more than 5 billion people and mobile phones have become part of our daily living. The next step in wireless connectivity is to connect all kinds of devices that can benefit from being connected, with a total of 28 billion connected devices predicted until 2021. It will support the transformation of industries on their journey of digitization. In this step, mobile communications has the ambition to explicitly target the communication needs of vertical industry with corresponding requirements being set for the standardization of 5G until 2020. 5GCAR brings together a strong consortium from the automotive industry and the mobile communications industry, to develop innovation at the intersection of those industrial sectors in order to support a fast, and successful path towards safer and more efficient future driving.

The mmMAGIC (Millimetre-Wave Based Mobile Radio Access Network for Fifth Generation Integrated Communications) project will develop and design new concepts for mobile radio access technology (RAT) for mm-wave band deployment. This is envisaged as a key component in the 5G multi-RAT ecosystem and will be used as a foundation for global standardization. The project will thus enable ultrafast mobile broadband services for mobile users, supporting UHD/3D streaming, immersive applications and ultra-responsive cloud services. The consortium brings together major infrastructure vendors (Samsung, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Intel, Nokia), major European operators (Orange, Telefonica), leading research institutes and universities (Fraunhofer HHI Institute, CEA-LETI, IMDEA Networks, Universities Aalto, Bristol, Chalmers and Dresden), measurement equipment vendors (Keysight Technologies, Rohde & Schwarz) and one SME (Qamcom). To complement its strong industry leadership and academic excellence, the project has an Advisory Board drawn from major European telecommunications regulators in Germany, France, Finland, Sweden and the UK. A new radio interface, including novel network management functions and architecture components will be proposed, taking as guidance 5G PPP’s KPI and exploiting the use of novel adaptive and cooperative beam-forming and tracking techniques to address the specific challenges of mm-wave mobile propagation. The project will undertake extensive radio channel measurements in the 6-100 GHz range, and will develop and validate advanced channel models that will be used for rigorous validation and feasibility analysis of the proposed concepts and system, as well as for usage in regulatory and standards fora. The ambition of the project is to pave the way for a European head start in 5G standards, including 3GPP, and to secure essential IPRs to European industry, strengthening European competitiveness.