MITRE Engenuity Open Generation Consortium named 3GPP Market Representation Partner

Non-profit, Industry and Academic consortium members to contribute to telecom standards for UAVs

McLean, Va., and Bedford, Mass., February 17, 2022

MITRE Engenuity’s Open Generation 5G Consortium has been recognized as a 3GPP Market Representation Partner, a position that enables the Consortium to play a leadership role in shaping the future of the telecommunications industry.

The Open Generation 5G Consortium will contribute technical perspectives and domain expertise from ongoing work with 5G and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) to identify additional applications and accelerate the impact of 5G.

The Consortium includes leaders from established private sector companies, start-ups, and academia, working together to develop 5G innovation in the public interest. Our work aims to advance commercialization of revolutionary and beneficial 5G enterprise applications and unlock their economic value.

3GPP, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, unites the seven top regional organizations developing standards and protocols for telecommunications technologies as they evolve.

“Recognition of Open Generation as an MRP allows our members to directly influence the standards development that will be crucial to the future of 5G,” said Ajit Kahaduwe, general manager, MITRE Engenuity Open Generation. “We are excited to work with 3GPP and contribute to the important work that is yet to come.”

Last year, MITRE Engenuity and Virginia Tech began working together on a series of testbed experiments designed to enable and advance the performance of 5G technology utilization for Uncrewed Aerial Systems. In the first quarter of 2021, the testing team implemented a proof-of-concept testbed and then successfully piloted an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) using end-to-end 5G New Radio (NR) communications. Open Generation expects these testcases and experiment results to be used to help guide 3GPP standards development, identify R&D investment opportunities, and help industry verticals be successful deploying UAS technologies.

In the past year, the Open Generation 5G Consortium has:

• Integrated a drone with 5G user equipment and performed both command-and-control communications (C3) and streaming video data via the 5G link.
• Implemented end-to-end communication between a ground control station (GCS) and the uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) connected to a 5G base station.
• Realized end-to-end 5G NR communication between the UAV and computers for C2 telemetry (sensor data from UAV to GCS) and C2 commands and performed flights in multiple operating modes.
• Began building a 65 square mile beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) 5G aviation range at the FAA accredited UAV facility run by NUAIR in NY State.

About MITRE Engenuity

MITRE Engenuity, a subsidiary of MITRE, is a tech foundation for the public good. MITRE’s mission-driven teams are dedicated to solving problems for a safer world. Through our public-private partnerships and federally funded R&D centers, we work across government and in partnership with industry to tackle challenges to the safety, stability, and well-being of our nation.

MITRE Engenuity brings MITRE’s deep technical know-how and systems thinking to the private sector to solve complex challenges that government alone cannot solve. MITRE Engenuity catalyzes the collective R&D strength of the broader U.S. federal government, academia, and private sector to tackle national and global challenges, such as protecting critical infrastructure, creating a resilient semiconductor ecosystem, building a genomics center for public good, accelerating use case innovation in 5G, and democratizing threat-informed cyber defense.

www.mitre-engenuity.org.