Orange opens the second 5G laboratory in Romania alongside the “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University in Iasi and Continental

admin Posted On March 29, 2023

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Orange opened in Iasi the second 5G laboratory in Romania, a technological hub dedicated especially to the automotive sector, where the academic environment, startups and companies from the Moldova region can innovate and test solutions based on 5G technology. The project is carried out by Orange, in partnership with the “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi (TUIASI) and Continental.

The launch of the second 5G laboratory in Romania comes 2 years after the opening of the one in Bucharest and is part of an international initiative of the Orange Group that aims to develop an extended Orange 5G Lab network in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The laboratory in Iași thus becomes the 18th opened at the level of the Orange Group, and in the more than 2 years since the start of the program, more than 2,000 companies have benefited from access to the resources of the Orange 5G Lab, and more than 200 of them have received support for test or develop their 5G-based services.

The new 5G laboratory inaugurated within TUIASI will work in a complementary way with the one in Bucharest, but a good part of its activity will be focused on the research and development of solutions for the transport and mobility of the future. Thus, Continental Iași and Orange Romania are working on the development of a solution for intelligent intersections that will increase road safety and lay the foundations for autonomous driving.

Orange 5G Lab – the space dedicated to innovation

The Orange 5G Lab in Iasi is equipped with technologies that will be available in the commercial network in the future, which can only be tested today in a laboratory environment:
5G Standalone Virtualized User Plane Function – the local component that processes 5G traffic and makes the connection with the core network of Orange 5G Lab Bucharest;
5G New Radio – the radio access component of the 5G infrastructure;
Open RAN & Open Core – separation of software from hardware and virtualization of the radio network or core network that allow the system to run on CoTS (Commercial-of-the-Shelf) equipment;
Edge Computing allows reducing the distance between users (applications) and services (data) and makes it easier to guarantee latencies and transmission throughput as required by services and applications.

The telecommunications architecture available in the Orange 5G laboratory in Iasi will open new opportunities for businesses in the Moldova region, will contribute to the regional economy and accelerate the digitalization of several economic sectors with the help of 5G, such as: automotive and autonomous cars, smart cities, transport and logistics, e-health, cyber security, green technology, etc. Since the opening of the first 5G laboratory in the country and until now, several Romanian companies and startups have started developing 5G projects alongside Orange, aimed at remotely coordinated river and maritime transport, urban mobility, precision agriculture or the future collaboration in industry 4.0.

The interest of the entrepreneurial environment in emerging technologies such as 5G was also highlighted following the survey carried out in Europe by the Orange Group at the beginning of this year. Thus, 83% of the Romanian companies that participated in the study believe that 5G technology will improve their business, while 78% say that they expect the telecommunications operator to offer them support with 5G solutions. In the same survey, 92% declared their interest in the Orange 5G Lab program.

Currently, the Orange 5G network is available in 25 cities throughout the country, including: Arad (100% coverage), Bacau, Craiova, Brașov, Bucharest (100% coverage), Cluj-Napoca, Constanța, Iasi, Sibiu and Timișoara, but also in localities in Ilfov county, mountain and summer resorts.

“The launch of the Orange 5G Lab in Iași gives us the chance to bring the technologies of the future to the present and to offer the academic, business and local startups access to a unique network architecture in Romania, open for testing. The resources and technologies from this laboratory will allow us to develop together with partners and researchers from TUIASI, solutions for the automotive sector, for safer intersections and for urban mobility, where we hope incidents will become the exception and not the rule.” said Marius Maican, Chief Technology Officer, Orange Romania.

“This collaboration with the local and national economic ecosystem has a triple role. First of all, the transformation of the ideas of TUIASI researchers and students into innovation is accelerated. Secondly, the laboratory is open to the local innovation community, being able to act as a testing platform for prototype applications from the entrepreneurial environment.

Together for safer smart intersections

The Continental research and development center with the support of Orange Business, TUIASI and Iași City Hall is working on the development of solutions dedicated to the automotive field and their integration into the road infrastructure specific to smart cities.

The Smart Intersection solution, installed in the Podu Roș intersection in Iași, aims to develop systems that allow automated and connected vehicles to coordinate their driving behavior when passing through smart intersections. This will help reduce the number of incidents and protect vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. The solution combines video image processing assisted by artificial intelligence with the benefits brought by the connection to a 5G network and an edge-computing solution. TUIASI contributes to this solution by developing algorithms for detecting and locating traffic participants, but also by researching the use of 5G technology in such scenarios.

The 5G technology provided by Orange leads to the substantial improvement of the Smart Intersection solution through the specific features of the latest generation connectivity, such as:
Ultra-low latency and ultra-high reliability needed to enhance collaborative driving;
The high density of connections for a certain geographical area and the high flow of data that facilitate the collection and sharing of information in real time;
Highly accurate estimation of the position of mobile users provided by 5G location services that helps improve the safety of vulnerable users in traffic.

“The project of smart intersections in Iași demonstrates once again how strong Continental’s Vision Zero objective is – zero fatal accidents, zero accidents with casualties, zero accidents. Continental Iași specialists have contributed to the development of algorithms and functionalities that increase road safety and open the way to autonomous driving. Together we set the future in motion” said Marian Petrescu, director of Continental Automotive Romania’s headquarters in Iași.

Present in Iași since 2006, the Continental company carries out research and development of leading technologies in the automotive industry, with an emphasis on software development, cyber security, connectivity and autonomous driving. The more than 2,000 specialists in Iasi work on projects dedicated to cities and smart cars, capable of increasing driving efficiency, safety and comfort.

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