UK Research Strategy Community Organisation in Communications, Mobile Computing and Networking within the EPSRC ICT Portfolio (CommNet II)

CommNet2 will bring together UK academics from the broad ICT space in order to derive and deliver a coherent national research programme that makes a real impact on the world stage. The increasingly complex multi-disciplinary engineering challenges associated with 5G and beyond, edge and core networking infrastructure, the Internet of Things (IOT), Data Analytics, Federated Cloud Fabric and the Tactile Internet necessitates a cross-disciplinary approach to research spanning knowledge sets from the underpinning fundamentals of materials through devices and subsystems to integrated systems, architectures and protocols. CommNet2 seeks to consolidate such an effort at the UK national scale to address the new challenges faced by society. Many of these challenges map against evolving EPSRC priorities for the IoT, Big Data Analytics, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Towards an Integrated Information Infrastructure, Complex Systems and Cognitive Computing, Security & Privacy and the emerging Research and Innovation Internet Environment. Mapped against the EPSRC ICT Theme Priorities, a three year programme of activities is proposed that include networking and training events; international research-horizon scanning; best practice challenge workshops and conferences; and opportunities for early career researchers.

The overarching aim of CommNet2 is to develop a robust framework in order to streamline and facilitate the academic innovation process towards delivering coherent and ground-breaking research directions shared by the communications and computer science disciplines to tackle 21st century ICT challenges. As a community driven response, the network will bring together academics from the electrical engineering, electronics, communications, networking, mathematics and computer science disciplines to achieve enhanced coordination of these researchers. Specifically, the network will create a vehicle enabling coordinated discussions and formulations of future research bids, activities and world-leading publications that establish internationally leading research activities.

CommNet2 will benefit the UK by: mobilising the UK's academic and industrial communities in the ICT space to undertake world-leading research programmes; providing younger ICT researchers with training and networking opportunities to develop into tomorrow's leaders; and building a strong, vibrant and cohesive community across the communications and computer science disciplines. The UK has long had global strength in the ICT arena. From pioneering mobile operators through to a rich heritage of start-ups and consultancies we have been at the forefront of wireless and wireline communications for decades. This reputation has led to innovation, continued inward investment from major global players and the establishment of important clusters around the UK, such as Cambridge, Shoreditch, Bristol and Northern Ireland, the Surrey 5GIC as well as the successful phases of the m-VCE. The advent of 5G, superfast broadband, the IoT, cloud computing and the Tactile Internet provides an opportunity to reinforce the UK's strengths in ICT. Through CommNet2, the academic community, by working closely with the relevant industry and organisations, will catalyse a step-change in ICT research for the benefit of society.

CommNet2 will establish a mechanism to increase collaboration between academic institutions in the UK researching within the ICT field. The added value derived from this collaboration will be harnessed to accelerate impact by formulating focused, community shared and corroborated research programmes that address key research challenges of a national scale with international relevance. As ICT affects and involves us all, the network will have beneficially impact across multiple stakeholders as set out below.

First and foremost the network will benefit UK academics by enabling them to target high quality research with innovation stemming from collaboration and meetings with others. This will help build internationally leading research groups, establish cross university collaborations and result in publications in prestigious journals. Further, the network will pull through early career academics while helping to train researchers. These latter activities will help develop the academic leaders of the future by facilitating their careers. Collectively, this effort will strengthen and grow further the UK academic community in ICT making it more cohesive, proactive and internationally leading.

The Universities will benefit through achieving enhanced reputations attracting greater numbers of high quality STEM students, increased research funding, more IPR generation and more spin-out companies. The latter will help grow the UK's ICT industrial sector as well as attract more inward investment. Additional benefits are expected in respect of growing cross discipline research with significantly different fields that will increasingly rely on ICT technology (e.g. health care, transport, infrastructure, energy etc...). EPSRC will benefit by funding higher quality research proposals with stronger impact potential, less duplication and a more even distribution of funding across the UK's academic base.

The UK has a vibrant industrial ICT sector consisting of global vendors (e.g. Fujitsu, Huawei, NEC, Qualcomm, Sony, Thales etc...), network operators (e.g. BT, EE, Telefonica O2, Vodafone) and software companies (IBM, Microsoft, Google, Unisys) as well as significant related industries in defense (Chemring, Selex, Cobham), test & measurement (Keysight Technologies, Aeroflex), chip design (ARM, Freescale), and numerous SMEs and clusters. Many of these companies are world leading such as ARM whose IP globally dominates the processor market in mobile phones. Several of these companies will support CommNet2 directly (see our list of partners) and all will benefit from the enhance flow of new ideas, collaborative research and technology developments enabled by CommNet2. In addition to technology advancements, the approaches in CommNet2 will help formulate better joint industry/academic research as advocated by the Catapults thereby helping to translate advanced ICT research into wealth generation and societal solutions.

Finally, the UK Government and regulatory agencies will benefit through enabling new ways of interacting with citizens for enhanced efficiency through the rapid delivery of wireless technologies, IoT and big data solutions in areas such as smart cities. Regulators like Ofcom will benefit from an increased understanding of future communications technology direction and the ability to work through one organisation in order to influence research to fit regulatory goals. Ultimately, these efforts will enhance the productivity and lifestyles of UK citizens.