Press release: MONROE announces first Open Call with a total budget of EUR 1,8 million for external experimenters

Fornebu, Norway – February 2016

The EU H2020 funded project MONROE (Measuring Mobile Broadband Networks in Europe) builds and operates an open, European-scale platform with multi-homing capabilities to run experiments on operational Mobile Broadband (MBB) networks. The platform will consist of up to 100 stationary and 150 mobile nodes, each connected to three MBB operators and WiFi. Initially, the nodes will be distributed in 4 countries: Norway, Sweden, Spain and Italy.

The experimenters can propose research and innovation projects through open calls, and successful proposals will be funded by the project to run active/passive measurements as well as to propose protocol experiments on the MONROE platform. Each experimenter selected through the first open call will get access to the platform for up to 18 months and will be funded with up to 150 thousand Euros. MONROE will organize two open calls and the total budget for the first one is 1,8 million Euros. In addition, MONROE encourages experimenters to extend the platform in terms of functionalities as well as coverage by deploying MONROE nodes to more locations and countries.

The MONROE project aims to measure and understand the quality of MBB networks as experienced by the end-user. MONROE also provides WiFi connectivity mimicking multi-homing in smartphones with both MBB and WiFi interfaces, to allow experimenting on different access technologies as well as exploring new ways of combining them to increase performance and robustness.

“The launch of the first Open Call is an important milestone for MONROE. Building and operating a MBB platform is the key goal of the project. Such a platform, however, cannot be built without the feedback of the experimenters, who will be its main users”, explains project coordinator Dr. Özgü Alay.

The profile of prospective external experimenters is wide and includes academics, industry or small and medium-sized enterprises active in research and/or development of mobile broadband technologies, protocols and/or applications. Member states of the European Union and Associated Countries are eligible to apply.

Simula Research Laboratory, in Norway, is the organisation that coordinates

MONROE. The project involves seven partners including universities, research institutes and industrial players from Norway, Italy, Spain and Sweden.

More information on the Open Call:

The call for proposals and all relevant documents are accessible via https://monroe.nntb.no/firstopencall/

The deadline for submissions of proposals is 15 March 2016, 17:00 CET.

About MONROE

MONROE is a three-year project that started in March 2015 and has a total budget of 6,5 million Euros. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 644399.

www.monroe-project.eu

MONROE’s objective is to design and operate the first European transnational open platform for independent, large-scale monitoring and assessment of performance of MBB networks in heterogeneous environments.
MONROE’s objective is to design and operate the first European transnational open platform for independent, large-scale monitoring and assessment of performance of MBB networks in heterogeneous environments.

 

End of Press Release

Project partners:

Celerway Communication AS

Fundacion Imdea Networks

Nextworks

Politecnico di Torino

Simula Research Laboratory AS

Telenor ASA

University of Karlstad

Coordinator contact:

Dr. Özgü Alay

Simula Research Laboratory

Fornebu, Norway

Phone: +47 984 85 362

E-mail: ozgu@simula.no

Media enquiries:

Dr. Audun Fosselie Hansen

Celerway Communication AS

Fornebu, Norway

Phone: +47 915 26 484

E-mail: audunh@celerway.com