Ireland’s CONNECT Centre to lead €3m EU-Brazil “FUTEBOL” Telecoms Project

The CONNECT Centre in Trinity College Dublin is to lead an EU-Brazil telecommunications research consortium after winning €3 million in a funding initiative co-managed by the Brazilian government and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme for research and innovation.

The consortium, known as FUTEBOL (Federated Union of Telecommunications Research Facilities for an EU-Brazil Open Laboratory), is the only Irish-led project among the five winning proposals.

FUTEBOL will allow researchers run experiments on a telecommunications network distributed across Europe and Brazil.

The consortium is led and coordinated by Professor Luiz DaSilva, Professor of Telecommunications at the CONNECT Centre for Future Networks in Trinity College Dublin.

Professor Luiz DaSilva said: “The Internet must evolve to facilitate a new generation of services as diverse as HD video and autonomous vehicles. New services emerging from the Internet of Things will also have to be accommodated.

“This requires an evolution of both the wireless network to which we connect and the optical network that forms the backbone of the Internet.

“FUTEBOL will enable researchers to experiment at the boundary of these two networks, through a network testbed federation that spans Europe and Brazil.

“We have already developed a very sophisticated testbed here at Trinity College. This can now be used by researchers across Europe and Brazil.”

The FUTEBOL consortium involves 13 partners, eight in Brazil and five in the EU, and is a mix of academic institutions, research centres and industry, including Intel.

Prof Luiz DaSilva added: “This success demonstrates Ireland’s attractiveness as an international research partner. It represents a strong return on recent efforts to encourage collaboration between research communities and industry partners in Ireland and Brazil.  With support from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), we are building strong relationships between the two countries and initiatives such as the International Strategic Cooperation Awards (ISCA) and Brazil-Ireland Science Week, organised by Research Brazil Ireland, have helped develop strong links among researchers and industry partners.”

FUTEBOL will launch later this year with research work commencing in January 2016.