University of Siena coordinates the European project 5G-HUB

To enable users involved in humanitarian crises or emergencies caused by natural disasters to move with their 5G terminal and have access to a range of telecommunications services to interconnect the rescue teams on the ground between the control room on a continuous basis, with high reliability audio, video and data communication: is the objective of the 5G-HUB project, coordinated by Professor Giovanni Giambene of the Department of Information Engineering and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Siena, which was launched at the end of 2024.

This will be done using either the terrestrial 5G mobile radio system, or the satellite 5G system, or by switching between them via a “handover” procedure.
The project of the Sienese University  is part of the GOVSATCOM programme European Union for government satellite communications, funded by the European Union Agency for the Space Programme with a total of €3 million, which are shared among the ten international partners, while the University of Siena has a share of over €400,000.

“The interoperability of terrestrial and satellite 5G systems, although internationally standardised by the 3GPP, is currently limited” – professor Giambene explains. “So the use of terrestrial 5G systems together and various satellite systems GOVSATCOM of Europe would require many user terminals, one per system. To address this problem, the University of Siena will develop an access system, called the Smart Gateway, which will be able to route GOVSATCOM server traffic according to urgency via both terrestrial and satellite”.

The project partners are: Centre Tecnologic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya, Hisdesat Servicios Estrategicos, Hispasat, Indra Sistemas, Indra Espacio, Onesource, Telecom Italia, Fundacio PROA, Associazione della Croce Rossa Italiana.