Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid

Carlos Conde, rector of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and Walter Ji, CEO of Huawei Spain have signed the five collaboration agreements of “Leading the LTE Era”, a project whose aim is to educate university students, invigorate the education sector with the study of cutting-edge technology (LTE/LTE A), and democratise the deployment of Next Generation Networks throughout the country. Felix Perez, director of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Telecomunicación of the UPM, has also take part in this event.  

This project is the first ever framework agreement between the company and a Spanish university, and the first of this type and teaching content that the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid has been involved with. The main beneficiaries include: the university students themselves, who will be able to combine their official qualification with another qualification that will complement their training and assist in their subsequent insertion into the labour market; staff at the university, who will have the use of the virtual laboratory; and Spanish society in general, which will benefit from the democratisation of LTE/LTE A technology.

“For the UPM, this agreement is very interesting due to several aspects. First of all, it gives the students the possibility to connect with the business reality cooperating with Huawei, an international leading company in the field of cutting edge technology. It is also a very valuable agreement to enhance the activities of different research groups in the UPM. Finally, the Chinese origins of Huawei reinforces the UPM intense cooperation with different Chinese universities in academic and research activities”, explains Carlos Conde.

Félix Pérez, director of the Telecommunications Engineering Faculty (Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Telecomunicaciones - ETSIT) at the UPM, explained that “This faculty, and more generally the UPM, is delighted that a leading ITC company, such as Huawei, has placed its trust in us to work on such an important project; important because of its contribution to a better understanding and application of the technology that the telecommunication systems of the future will be built on. He also explained that, “The agreement signed will assist future collaboration, aiming to improve the training of our graduates and develop research and innovation in what is an important strategic sector for our country”.

The pillars of the agreement

“Leading the LTE Era” includes four central pillars for action:

a.)Teaching a Huawei-UPM Postgraduate course in mobile technology, following a joint approach involving a group of teaching staff from ETSIT and Huawei Spain employees with a rich experience in the sector. The course will run from 22nd April to 15th July of 2014, and will be taught at the ETSIT faculty at the UPM.

Its timetable will include 200 hours of supervised learning, divided into 4 modules that will be taught for four hours a day from Monday to Thursday. Huawei will offer 20 grants, of €1,500 each, to cover 50% of the places on the course. Blocks covered in the program include an introduction to the LTE system, its applications and services, current products and solutions, design and implementation of LTE networks and laboratory practice.

You can register your interest by sending your CV to expertolte@gtic.ssr.upm.es

An initial selection will be made from applications received before 9th April 2014. For more information please call 915495700 ext, 4028 (mornings).

b.) Licensing applications for LTEStar 6.0 for setting up a Virtual Laboratory developed by Huawei which simulates the functionality of optimized EPC network architecture, end-user equipment and the network entity Evolved NodeB (eNodeB), as well as the operation and maintenance of the latter in the School of Telecommunications Engineering of the UPM. The last module of the programme will include an internship at the laboratory and, in addition, the use of the application will be assigned to the University.  Huawei will moreover grant the University the use of the application for the duration of 1 year.
c.) Six month internship at Huawei Technologies España, starting September 2014, for 10 students on the programme. The technical areas they will be able to work in include: network support, testing, product presentation, product management and product technology.

d.) Huawei sponsorship of a study on the real problems and challenges that the deployment of 30 Mbps LTE network access for rural areas in Spain will entail. The study will be carried out by the ETSIT UPM between September and December 2014.