Instituto de Telecomunicações is part of two consortia linked to mobility in the National Tesbeds Network, the NextGen Mobility testbeds project, together with Brisa (project leader), Altice, A-to-Be, and FI Group.
Our researcher Joaquim Ferreira states that "IT's mission in this project is to pursue its mission of supporting public policies and the development of the national economy, providing a large-scale experimentation infrastructure that can be used and exploited by companies, from SMEs to Startups and to large companies to demonstrate mobility products, services, and equipment.”
The infrastructure that IT has on the ground extends from the city of Aveiro to the beaches, including the highway, which includes dozens of kilometers of optical fiber, and a wide range of road sensors.
Sensors include radars, lidars, and cameras, which allow traffic classification and real-time data collection. In parallel with these sensors, IT also provides a support telecommunications network, including vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, using various technologies, and also having a private 5G network for experimentation and other technologies.
“This experimentation environment is extremely rich and enhances the development and validation of many products and services. All data from these sensors, installed along dozens of kilometers of roads in the region, are grouped and aggregated in the IT Data Center, where they can be made available to users, including companies, who want to work on this data”, concludes Joaquim Ferreira.
With an endowment of 150 million euros (through the Recovery and Resilience Plan), the government presented last week on University of Aveiro the project of 30 consortiums with more than 2 thousand products and services in several areas, namely health, environment, telecommunications, and mobility.
The objective of the NextGen Mobility testbeds is to support SMEs and Startups to accelerate the development of new digital products and services and speed up value creation in the ecosystem.