ENCQOR 5G and ÉTS: The future of wireless communication
Working in harmony with the mission of ENCQOR, ÉTS offers a platform that allows companies to prove their concepts and technologies and to improve their capacity for expansion through Centech, its technology company accelerator.
At ÉTS, ENCQOR 5G takes the form of a veritable test bench for Québec SMEs and other organizations!
Presentation
A $400 M public-private partnership, the objective of the ENCQOR project (Evolution of Networked Services through a Corridor in Quebec and Ontario for Research and Innovation) is to develop technologies and infrastructure for 5G networks. ENCQOR is financed by the governments of Canada, Ontario and Québec, and by five leaders in the digital sector (Ericsson, Ciena, Thales, IBM and CGI).
Focused on accelerating the shift to a digital economy and enhancing the competitiveness of Canada, Quebec and Ontario within the global economy, ENCQOR aims to make Canada a world leader in the wireless future through a 5G-based open innovation platform.
International partnerships are also a possibility thanks to a collaboration between ENCQOR 5G in Canada and 5G PPP in Europe
There are five ENCQOR 5G digital innovation hubs in Ontario and Québec, including Centech, which is currently the most active.

Collaboration with ÉTS
ÉTS is a preferred partner that:
Offers mentorship and support on multiple fronts:
- Developing technologies, products or services and providing access to Centech’s 5G test bench at ÉTS;
- Collaborating with professors and students within the context of small- or large-scale projects;
- Helping to obtain funding for projects: ENCQOR Innovation and federal and provincial granting agencies (NSERC, MITACS, PROMPT, etc.).
Provides access to cutting-edge expertise in a variety of fields:
- Internet of Things
- Edge computing
- Green information and communication technologies
- Connected and autonomous vehicles
- Smart cities
- Industry 4.0
- Advanced robotics
- Artificial intelligence
- Machine learning
- Photonics and open programmable optical networks
- Cybersecurity
- Intelligent buildings
It is worth noting that, in 2019, ÉTS received more than $3 M in grants for its students from MITACS, in collaboration with Ciena and Ericsson.
Current 5G projects at ÉTS
- "Self-optimizing Fabric for ENCQOR Network"
Professors Mohammed Cheriet and K. Nguyen in partnership with Ciena and MITACS.
- "Towards an Intelligent and Secure 5G Ecosystem for the Transformation and Digitalization of Societies Through Artificial Intelligence"
Professors Éric Granger, Georges Kaddoum, Kaiwen Zhang, Kim Khoa Nguyen et Chamseddine Talhi, in partnership with Ericsson and MITACS.
- "Self-Adaptive Pattern Recognition with Deep Neural Network"
Professors Christine Tremblay and Christian Desrosiers in partnership with Ciena and MITACS
- "Performance Degradation and Failure Detection Methods for Optical Networks Based on Machine Learning"
Professors Christine Tremblay and Christian Desrosiers in partnership with Ciena and TELUS
- "Modélisation et analyse des performances de la connectivité du réseau 5G"
Professor René Jr Landry in partnership with Important, Innovation ENCQOR and Prompt.
Why focus on 5G?
5G refers to the fifth generation of wireless communication, which is in the process of completely transforming the telecommunication sector.
A hundred times as fast as current 4G technology, 5G will allow for connectivity among a vast number of devices and improve lag time (the time of transmission for a piece of information), which will be reduced to less than one millisecond from the current 40 milliseconds. Security, speed and quality are among the priorities in the installation of this new generation of technology.
Network upload/download speeds and time for downloading a 4.5 GB movie
3G | Speed: 384 Kbps Time: 26 hours |
4G | Speed: 300 Mbps Time: 6 minutes |
4G+ | Speed: 100 Mbps Time: 2 minutes |
5G | Speed: 1 à 10 Gbps Time: 4 to 40 seconds |