INFORMATION SOCIETY TECHNOLOGIES (IST) PROGRAMME

Contract number: IST-2000-25355
Project name: Functional UMTS Real Emulator
Project acronym: FUTURE

Key Action 4 Action Line IST-2000-4.5.3
Total cost € 5,346,461
Commission funding €2,698,075

Key issues
The FUTURE project represents a key contribution to the European policy for the development of new telecommunication services and for the global construction of the European Information Society. The project will directly contribute to the enhancement of Europe’s strategic competitive position in the field of developing the terrestrial and satellite UMTS, starting from the present second generation systems to the forthcoming third and fourth ones. The success of this policy will enable the European countries to maintain their actual competitive advantage, gained with the development of the GSM, in the future market development.

The terrestrial and satellite UMTS developments promoted by the FUTURE project will provide important benefits for mobile users in terms of more efficient use of telecommunication resources, new useful services and better quality of services. Moreover, the network operators and the users will obtain remarkable benefits since they will manage more flexible networks and will be able to provide more standardized services.

Project main goals
The FUTURE project, thanks to the financial support of the IST Programme of the European Union, aims at adopting recent advances in the Internet arena in UMTS by exploring applicability of native internet protocols in third generation systems. Special emphasis is given to core network consolidation towards a general purpose multi service UMTS connectivity network, legacy GSM/UMTS voice service migration to the consolidated packet based UMTS core network domain, and the introduction of a wide range of optimised multimedia communication and information services. The integration of telephony services with information services is regarded as the basis for end-user service multiplication and will be combined with inherent capabilities of satellite UMTS like wide area coverage, broadcasting, and location determination. Key functions of the envisaged UMTS will be identified, designed, and demonstrated, using the VIRTUOUS Demonstrator, which was also co-funded by the IST Programme of the European Union, as a starting point.

Technical approach
The FUTURE project aims at achieving the following technical objectives:

• A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based UMTS multimedia subsystem will be designed to be integrated into the cellular network operator’s/service provider’s network infrastructure.
• A multimedia Session Initiation Protocol Client and an enhanced Session Initiation Protocol Proxy which meets the requirements in the UMTS environment will be designed, developed, and partly implemented as prototypes, using a commercial platform.
• Vistas of innovative applications offering yet unknown added value to end users are expected from innumerable combinations of Session Initiation Protocol based real-time multimedia communication services and Web/WAP based non-real-time information services.
• Demonstrating the achievement of end-to-end Quality of Services for voice over Internet Protocol, web browsing and ftp server.
• Demonstrating the " Quality of Services guaranteeing functions" allowing to meet the Quality of Services subcontract in the UMTS Access Network.

• Evaluating the efficiency of physical and Medium Access Control layer access mechanisms in regard of packet services. In particular packet will be further investigated because no definitive solution for the satellite UMTS packet mode has yet been devised.

The work to be undertaken in the FUTURE project is divided into nine Workpackages:

Expected achievements / impact
The FUTURE project, thanks to the financial support of the IST Programme of the European Union, aims at adopting recent advances in the Internet arena in UMTS by exploring The expected result of FUTURE is that key functions of the envisaged UMTS will be identified, designed, and demonstrated, using the VIRTUOUS Demonstrator as a starting point. The presence of substantial innovation is evident. Therefore, the project scope is not just market-driven, since it addresses a well-defined and real limitation of current UMTS specification, but it is also research-driven and wishes to offer considerable contributions to the UMTS standardisation world.

The exploitable results from the various development tasks that will take place in the scope of FUTURE include:

• a test-bed of an enhanced satellite UMTS demonstrator
• the demonstration of the performance of end-to-end Quality of Services strategies,
• network services for the support of SIP –based real-time multimedia services,
• value-added applications of the terrestrial and satellite UMTS network infrastructure
  

Coordinator contact details