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Security and resilience

Resilient future communications infrastructure

Maximising the performance of technologies across all platforms

Secure, robust and high-performance infrastructure

Communications networks are part of the UK’s critical national infrastructure and need to be fit for purpose, robust, resilient and secure to enable growth in productivity, efficiency and digital transformation across all sectors and end user applications. The extreme complexity and flexibility requirements of future networks, and the prevalence of virtualisation and software, mean that industry is not always confident in the development and deployment of future communications technologies and infrastructure, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

NPL is supporting the UK’s drive to be a global leader in 5G technology and at the forefront of emerging future communications networks. We are keen to see wider acceptance that future converged networks are a necessary component of our national digital infrastructure, and will support other critical services.

Technical challenges

  • develop new, standardised measurement capabilities that combine physical and digital properties to accelerate advances in new communications techniques and devices
  • improve confidence in decision making by combining physical and digital measurements, with an emphasis on integration, interoperability, quality and security of data, algorithms, autonomous systems and networks

How measurement will meet the challenges of an evolving physical and digital world

  • develop characterisation, validation, verification and testing (VV&T) of future communications hardware, software and infrastructure
  • ensure interoperability, integration, performance, security, robustness and resilience of multi-entity and modality networks
  • verification, validation and testing of new technologies and applications supported by future networks, in order to prevent live network failures and to accelerate development and deployment of new, resilient technology

Reproducibility in research

This report describes the important role of measurement science. It also gives recommendations for the infrastructure required to underpin the security and resilience transformation.

Report

The importance of data

White Paper: Network 2030 - A Blueprint of Technology, Applications and Market Drivers Towards the Year 2030 And Beyond
 
As a society we strive for the possibilities of high-resolution immersive multimedia over the Internet, smart IoTs, factory automation and autonomous vehicles to become real. The role of the network community is to identify the right set of network technologies required to deliver these applications. Network 2030 is one such community. It is scoped to serve up the communication needs of our society in the year 2030 and it addresses new capabilities of both public and private wireline or fixed networks.

Sundeep Bhandari, Strategy Manager and David Humphreys, Principal Research Scientist are two of the authors and members of the Network 2030 community.

Case study

Proving the technology that will underpin the UK’s national spaceflight services

Article

Case study

Installation of an RF antenna range in China

Article

Working with NPL

Our researchers are at the forefront of new innovations that promise to deliver new solutions to Digital challenges. We play a vital role in providing the standards and assurance to provide confidence in new products and providing reliable data. Learn more about our research areas and working with our experts. 

If you have a research collaboration where our expertise can help, please can contact the team and discuss your challenge.

Contact us

Work with us

Our research and measurement solutions support innovation and product development. We work with companies to deliver business advantage and commercial success.
Contact our Customer Services team on +44 20 8943 7070