University of Sharjah, UoS, and du and have signed a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, to collaborate on 5G connectivity and the Internet of Things, IoT, development as part of the UAE 5G Innovation Gate, U5GIG.

Taking the lead to build a UAE 5G and IoT Innovation Lab at techno Hub of DSO to test, validate, and develop 5G and IoT use cases and services, du will collaborate with University of Sharjah for the research and development of the 5G systems, including massive MIMO, also known as Large-Scale Antenna Systems, Very Large MIMO, Hyper MIMO, Full-Dimension MIMO and ARGOS, and cloud computing.

The UAE 5G Innovation Gate, U5GIG, has been envisioned to be a consortium of industrial and academic organisations in UAE supported with international telecom organisations to plan and use their expertise to define and develop a global 5G network that will radically change lives across the UAE by building a super connected nation.

Speaking about the importance of U5GIG and the MoU, Ibrahim Nassir, Chief Human Capital and Administration Officer at du, said, "We are proud to participate in the leadership vision to establish the UAE as a technology development hub and this can only happen through collaboration between industry and academia. We are inspired not only to implement but also to develop state of the art technologies in UAE and make it available to UAE students at University of Sharjah through our MoU. Together with the UoS, we will establish an open platform for research and development to participate in the standardisation and development of 5G and IoT use cases in the UAE."

Under the scope of the MoU, du will build a UAE 5G and IoT innovation lab at Techno Hub of DSO to be the core of the U5GIG, which university staff and students will have access to, and experts from both du and the University of Sharjah will jointly supervise graduate and under-graduate programmes with focus on practical research topics.