With that and several other reasons in mind, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) in collaboration with Luxembourg’s Department of Media, Telecommunications and Digital Policy (SMC), is launching a special awareness-raising platform to showcase and explain the technologies behind 5G, and specifically to make the complex world of 5G-mobility concepts, accessible to the greatest number of people possible.

Entitled 5G-PLANET, or 5G Network Digital Twin for Connected Mobility in Luxembourg to give it its full name, the project’s aim is creating a copy of Luxembourg’s existing 5G infrastructure in order to demonstrate its use, capabilities, limits etc, to a wide audience.

5G-PLANET primarily intends to share LIST's experience on the planning and design of new 5G networks, by taking Luxembourg as a practical example. It will specifically target connected mobility applications and intelligent transport systems, which are among the most promising uses of 5G on a socio-economic level - but still requiring a few years before advanced implementation.

Sébastien Faye from LIST’s IT for Information Services (ITIS) department and project leader, stated, "most of the use cases that benefit from 4G took several years to be really implemented. The same will apply to 5G, as it will for 6G and beyond in several years’ time. Deploying new network technologies is immensely complex and exploiting their full potential is also a challenge, but one that can generate massive economic benefits down the road. Mobility is an excellent example to illustrate this point and explain to the general public the interest of using new, low latency communication means”.

Traffic light management, prevention of road incidents, cooperation between vehicles and the development of autonomous functions are all applications that can benefit from 5G, which is of tremendous interest to the Luxembourg and European ecosystems.

5G-PLANET plans to build on LIST’s expertise to propose a decision support system to plan and design 5G networks for cooperative, connected, and automated (CCAM) mobility applications. This system will be the subject of demonstrations to raise public awareness about the interest of these technologies. To do so, LIST will rely on a Digital Twin approach, by creating a digital replica of Luxembourg’s 5G infrastructure. One of the objectives is to offer a visual and attractive showcase to raise the public awareness.

How can 5G networks be used and deployed for connections to mobility applications, with a focus on vehicular communications? What is the impact of 5G on mobility performance compared to other communication technologies? Is it better than other technology? How much does is cost? What would be the interest of developing a 5G network digital twin for Luxembourg? These are just some of the important questions 5G-PLANET project aims to tackle while using as many use-cases as possible and informing the public of its findings.

Building a replica also includes constructing an open 5G antenna, developed in Laboratory mode at LIST, allowing anyone equipped with a 5G phone to experiment the real capabilities of a 5G network, and interact with LIST’ software solutions.

As part of the awareness boosting project, 5G-PLANET plans to be present as several events including in Luxembourg at LIST Tech Day on 22 September, and the 5G Network Digital Twin for Luxembourg event in Luxembourg at the Connecting Tomorrow: 5G Broadband and Beyond conference in LuxExpo the Box, Kirchberg from 5th to 7th of October 2021. In Barcelona, Spain, LIST will be present at the Smart City Expo World Congress from 16 to 18 November, and across Europe for Scientific conferences on various dates.

Visit the 5G Planet project webpage: https://www.list.lu/en/research/project/5g-planet/