(Hong Kong, 22 February 2016) The Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) has strengthened its collaboration with Fundacio Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC) and CTTC-HK Limited (CTTCHK) to jointly participate in 5G R&D projects.

Fifth generation, 5G, mobile communication system is expected to enable new services including enhanced mobile broadband, massive machine type communications, and ultra-reliable and low latency communications. ASTRI and CTTC are actively engaged in 5G R&D in Asia and Europe, respectively. The two organizations sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly participate in R&D projects on topics such as 5G air interface designs, 5G hardware and software platforms, and 5G fronthaul and backhaul solutions. This partnership will facilitate ASTRI, CTTC and CTTCHK to reach out to new markets and enhance the commercialization and impact of their technologies.

The MoU was signed by Justin Chuang (Vice President and Group Director of ASTRI), Miguel Angel Lagunas (Director of CTTC), and Albert Sitja (Director of CTTCHK) at the CTTC Barcelona headquarter during the Barcelona Mobile World Congress 2016 study mission co-organized by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park Corporation and Catalonia Trade & Investment, the public agency that works to attract foreign direct investment to Barcelona and Catalonia.

ASTRI’s 5G R&D focus covers D2D/V2X solutions for enhancing reliability and reducing latency, ultra-dense network (UDN) algorithms and architecture, massive MIMO channel estimation and robust beamforming solutions, and opportunistic spectrum utilization schemes.

ASTRI has striven to develop LTE research since 2008 and has become a leader in LTE and LTE-Advanced small cell and terminal technologies, providing the first market-ready reference design for small cell and terminal baseband cores supporting both TD-LTE and LTE FDD. ASTRI’s LTE technologies have been employed in partners’ chips and system solutions serving public and private network markets. Its core technologies were successfully transferred to multiple companies.

Since 2009, CTTC has been working in several LTE research and development projects in TDD-LTE Physical Layer and LTE network simulation. Currently, CTTC is one of the Spanish research institutions more deeply involved in the development of the future generation of mobile communications 5G and is already working on the 5GPP projects Flex5Gware, FANTASTIC-5G and 5G-Crosshaul.