JOINER is a university-led, national experimentation platform created to accelerate future communications and networks research, exploitation and adoption.  It forms part of the UK Federated Telecoms Hubs (FTH), alongside the TITAN, HASC and CHEDDAR telecoms hubs, supporting the UK’s strategy for future telecoms through the provision of joined up infrastructure.  In partnership, JOINER connects 15+ research laboratories across the UK and beyond, each bringing their own unique specialisations and capabilities, creating a network of ‘nodes’ that draws together research leaders and test networks internationally, to facilitate collaboration and access to expertise at scale.

Objectives

JOINER aims to:

• Advance the technology readiness levels (TRLs) and market readiness of fundamental new research, bridging the gap between academia and industry
• Break down barriers between industry and academia, providing real-world research outcomes to help guide government decision-making, and offering investors a clear technology roadmap
• Test new solutions in a real-world representative environment, to identify pros and cons, and scale potential, translating cutting edge research into viable solutions and progressing new ideas into the UK supply chain
• Accelerate the process of validation and co-creation of 6G technologies and applications, coordinating and federating new future networks testbed initiatives for research, innovation and adoption trials

Methodology

JOINER brings together the knowledge and research expertise of world-leading universities and laboratories from across the UK to offer a combination of test environments, tools and infrastructure, combined with an emphasis on knowledge sharing, dissemination and skills development.  It provides a platform for proof-of-concept demonstration and early commercialisation, offering users an environment in which to gather experimental evidence, advance research translation, generate valuable intellectual property (IP), test and validate services in real-world representative conditions, and develop in-demand specialist skills.

JOINER offers three core virtual facilities.

• Maximising spectrum potential – providing persistent, high-fidelity radio frequency monitoring and data capture across wide bandwidths and in diverse environments, enabling large-scale spectrum research, emulation and data gathering
• Non-Terrestrial-Network (NTN) emulation – providing tools to experiment at scale for space-enabled innovation such as satellite-terrestrial integration, space-edge computing, spectrum sharing across land, and space-based systems and networking
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) acceleration – laying the foundation for a new generation of networks that are distributed, intelligent and self-optimising, enabling rapid experimentation and deployment of AI capabilities, and faster time-to-value for powerful, telco-specific use cases

The platform serves academia, entrepreneurs, government and enterprise in the UK, and is also available to the wider international telecoms ecosystem, with opportunities for overseas organisations and academics to engage with the very best of what the UK has to offer.

Impact

As a scientific instrument in its own right, JOINER is neutral, heterogenous and agile – opening up new technological avenues and applications that haven’t been considered before – and offering robust capabilities in hybrid cloud, AI-ready edge computing, spectrum experimentation, NTN emulators and secure networking.  The real-life testing conditions provided by the platform mean that world-leading research can be conducted at scale, far beyond what is possible in a single lab, helping facilitate a new era for telecoms research and development (R&D).

Project partners: the University of Bristol, also lead partner, alongside core partners Imperial College London (CHEDDAR hub), the University of Cambridge (TITAN hub) and the University of Oxford (HASC hub), together with 11 partner nodes

JOINER is fully funded by the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), via the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).