Deploying a Novel 5G-Enabled Architecture on City Infrastructure for Ultra-High Definition and Immersive Media Production and Broadcasting

With the massive growth of cutting-edge media services, such as ultra-high definition video and immersive media (i.e., virtual and augmented reality), demand for large investments in a scalable, ubiquitous, and robust communication infrastructure and services increases enormously. The H2020 5GCity project aims to provide a solution for such issues by designing, developing, and deploying a sliceable, distributed cloud/edge and radio platform with neutral hosting capability to support the sharing between information technology infrastructure owners and media service providers (i.e., vertical media actors). In this paper, we initially introduce the essential benefits of the 5GCity technology and neutral host model to facilitate the rise of highly demanding media use cases (UCs) and its implication on how service providers typically operate (in terms of business model). Then, we show how the 5GCity architecture and infrastructure, in light of certain key performance indicators, address this demand through three media UCs (namely related to “video acquisition and production at the edge,” “immersive services,” and “mobile production and transmission”) and we explain how they are implemented and deployed in real citywide pilots (in Bristol, Lucca, and Barcelona) to demonstrate the benefits for infrastructure owners and media service providers.