Industry’s First 5G Algorithm Innovation Competition

Competition Sponsored by Intel and Other Industry Leaders Connects Research Community and Industry; Participants Deliver Passion and Quality in 5G Designs

Beijing, China – January 26, 2015 — Altera, now a part of Intel Corporation, announced the results of the 5G Algorithm Innovation Competition, the industry’s first awards competition to focus on aligning silicon and systems companies with the research community to create a pool of new and innovative ideas to help accelerate 5G, the fifth generation of mobile networks.

First announced in May by Altera, now the Intel Programmable Solutions Group, Xidian University, and Terasic, the 5G Algorithm Innovation Competition was sponsored by technology leaders and gold sponsors Huawei and Intel, and silver sponsor Spreadtrum, and attracted an impressive 184 teams from leading universities from a wide geographical area. The 184 teams consisted of 462 students from 76 universities in 31 Chinese cities.

Participating student teams were required to submit link-level simulations and logical implementations of three 5G new air-interface key algorithms, SCMA (Sparse Code Multiple Access), F-OFDM (Filtered-OFDM) and polar code, based on Altera FPGAs.

Student Teams Honored for Award-winning 5G Projects
Thirty teams were selected to move forward to the final competition, of which there were twenty teams awarded the inaugural5G Algorithm Innovation Competition Gold, Silver and Bronze awards.  For details of the competition results, please visit:https://www.innovateasia.com/5g/en/5g_all_prize_en03.html

In addition to the twenty winning teams, thirteen teams were recognized with Excellent awards, which included the 5G Algorithm Excellent FPGA Implementation, and the 5G Algorithm Excellent Simulation Awards. A special award from the organizers was presented to Xidian University in recognition of its support in organizing the competition. Leaders from Intel, Huawei, Spreadtrum, Xidian University, and Terasic, were on hand to congratulate the winners.

Industry Sponsor Quotes

• “The engineering designs delivered by the students were very innovative. We are delighted to see that the 5G algorithm competition turned out to be a huge success,” said Erhaan Shaikh, Vice President, Business Divisions, Programmable Solutions Group, Intel. “The competition explored the potential of delivering FPGA-based designs that can accelerate processing, enabling a faster time to market for OEMs and carriers who are rolling out 5G wireless networks.”
• “Promoting industry and academic community efforts fosters and strengthens future technological advancements in the communications industry,” said Sandra Rivera, Vice President, Data Center Group and General Manager, Network Platforms Group, Intel. “The projects in the 5G Algorithm Competition are great examples of how collaborative thinking can accelerate innovation in 5G development.”
• “The submissions were impressive and it was amazing to see that the students completed these high-quality works in only six months,” said Ms. Wang Zhiqin, Director, Communication Standards Institute of Telecom Academy, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China, and leader of the judging committee. “The results show that the performance of the three 5G new air-interface techniques, f-OFDM, SCMA and polar code are excellent. To some extent, the complexity and completion have met commercial deployment requirements. These kind of academic activities greatly evangelize the advanced technologies and accelerated their applications in the coming 5G wireless standard.”
• “This 5G awards event represents the collaboration among the academic research community as well as the key industry players, which results in an outstanding effort in supporting our efforts toward creating ground-breaking 5G technologies,” said Dr. Wen Tong, Fellow and CTO, Huawei Wireless. “We are very pleased with the impressive quality of the student projects that will lay a foundation in the emerging 5G air-interface standard, and the expanded use of FPGA technology.”
• “We are honored to have participated in this inaugural 5G algorithm innovation competition,” said Dr. Yi Kang, Global VP of Spreadtrum Communications. “The student research projects showed a relatively mature understanding of 5G and displayed innovations in a number of areas—the physical layer waveform, multiple access, and the channel coding applied in physical layer technology of core wireless communication. Spreadtrum will continue to contribute our effort in China’s 5G standardization process.”

The 5G Algorithm Innovation Competition
The 5G Algorithm Innovation Competition is part of the InnovateAsia 2015 FPGA Design Contest, an established engineering design contest for university students in APAC, fostering talent and driving innovation. The Huawei Innovation Research Program (HIRP) provided significant support during the competition, along with the algorithmic topic recommendation, demonstrating its commitment to innovation and developing future technologies as a leading communications company. Through the HIRP, Huawei will continue to enhance industry collaboration and strengthen knowledge sharing to drive technological advancements.

The Altera University Program supports schools who offer students an education in engineering and digital technology. The support to universities comes in the form of hardware, software and teaching materials. The program sponsors conferences, workshops, and design contests for academics and students around the world. In addition, the program sponsors student design competitions, which have resulted in many innovative designs.