Prof. Thomas MagedanzDirector at Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems & Visiting Professor at University of Cape TownSpeaker
Profile
Thomas Magedanz (PhD) has been professor at the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, leading the chair for next generation networks (www.av.tu-berlin.de) since 2004. Since 2006 he has acted as visiting professor at the Electrical Engineering Faculty of the University of Cape Town, and has been Director of the Business Unit Software-based Networks (NGNI) at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS (www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/go/ngni) in Berlin since 2003.
For 30 years Prof. Magedanz has been a globally recognized ICT expert, working in the convergence field of telecommunications, Internet and information technologies understanding both the technology domains and the international market demands. He often acts as an independent technology consultant for international ICT companies. In the course of his applied research and development activities he created many internationally recognized prototype implementations of global telecommunications standards that provide the foundations for the efficient development of various open technology testbeds around the globe. His interest is in software-based 5G networks for different verticals, with a strong focus on public and non-public campus networks.
The Fraunhofer 5G Playground (www.5G-Playground.org) represents, in this regard, the world´s most advanced Open 5G testbed which is based on the Open5GCore software toolkit (www.open5Gcore.org), representing the first reference implementation of the 3GPP 5G standalone architecture, which is currently also used by many customers for testing against different RAN equipment in different use cases. For three years, he has actively supported the buildup of emerging 5G campus networks based on the Open5GCore considering emerging campus networks as the prime spot for 5G innovation. Since 2022 he is coordinating the national flagship project CampusOS (www.Campus-OS.io) which aims to build an ecosystem for open campus networks.
His current research is targeting the 5G evolution to 6G, including Core-RAN integration (including OpenRAN integration), Satellite/Non-terrestrial Networks and 5G/6G integration, as well as AI/ML based 5G/6G network control and management, in which he is developing an organic 6G core network in the next years.