NEC building smart campus for 5G R&D at University of Murcia

NEC Iberica and NEC Laboratories Europe have been awarded a contract to build a smart campus network for the University of Murcia in Spain that will provide an experimental 5G platform for student education and research. The smart campus will also include FIWARE-based data spaces and an Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem to improve energy efficiency for the university.

NEC said it will be teaming up with partners to deploy a private, multipurpose 5G system within the university’s Espinardo campus, providing a research facility and testbed for the study of 5G networks, edge computing, data spaces and IoT ecosystems. 

The aim is to help students develop advanced 5G networking and IoT skills, while giving researchers access to one of Europe’s most advanced environments for novel 5G technology and data space research, said NEC, adding that a management and orchestration (MANO) framework is also planned for the 5G IoT ecosystem.

The smart campus project is led by Spain’s Centre for the Development of Technology and Innovation (CDTI) and funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).