NVS1 – 6G Vision Building
Tuesday, 4 June 2024, 11:00-13:00, room Nightingale
Session Chair: tbd
6G Research & Innovation Activities in Europe: An Overview of EU & Nationally Funded Programmes
Toon Norp and Prachi Sachdeva (TNO, The Netherlands); Carles Antón-Haro (Centre Tecnologic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), Spain); Konstantinos Trichias (6G Smart Networks & Services Industry Association (6G SNS IA), Greece & National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece); Pooja Mohnani (Eurescom, European Union)
The first 6G networks are expected to be deployed around 2030, and the relevant Research and Innovation (R&I) activities in Europe are well underway. Several 6G R&I funding programmes are ongoing, both on national level and pan-European, creating a complex ecosystem, which, however, offers significant collaboration opportunities. This paper provides an overview of major national 6G initiatives in EU member states. These major national initiatives, with budgets of hundreds of M€ are found in the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France, Finland, and Germany. For each of these national initiatives information on budget, timing and structure is provided. The paper also presents an overview of the topics addressed in these national 6G initiatives. Additional 6G R&I activities in Europe are identified for the UK, Ireland, Norway, Belgium and Portugal, while an overview of the research topics addressed in the pan-EU collaborative projects of the SNS JU, is also provided.
6G Smart Networks and Services: Global Strategies, Main Work Directions & Future Outlook
Carles Antón-Haro (Centre Tecnologic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), Spain); Konstantinos Trichias (6G Smart Networks & Services Industry Association (6G SNS IA), Greece & National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece); Claudio De Majo (TRUST-IT Services, Spain); Alexandros Kaloxylos (6G Smart Networks and Services Industry Association (6G-IA), Belgium); Jos Beriere (TNO, The Netherlands)
Europe’s Research and Innovation activities towards the next generation of mobile connectivity standards (6G) are well underway via the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU). The SNS ICE coordination and support action project, which is the de facto ambassador of the SNS JU, is tasked with monitoring and reporting global 6G trends to the SNS JU as well as promoting the SNS JU work to the world. This paper presents SNS ICE’s approach and designed framework to accomplish these bidirectional activities, targeting the establishment of the SNS JU achievements within the global 6G ecosystem. In doing so, this paper also highlights the key strategies of the SNS JU, summarizes the global status and roadmaps of major standards organizations with regards to 6G and provides insights into the main messages extracted by the SNS JU projects’ work so far. Within this context, the future directions of the SNS R&I work are also discussed.
6G Global Landscape: A Comparative Analysis of 6G Targets and Technological Trends
Konstantinos Trichias (6G Smart Networks & Services Industry Association (6G SNS IA), Greece & National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece); Alexandros Kaloxylos (6G Smart Networks and Services Industry Association (6G-IA), Belgium); Colin Willcock (6G IA, Belgium)
The development of 6G networks and services is underway on a global scale. During 2025, the standardization process will also commence. As all regions are targeting globally accepted standards, it is essential at an early stage to identify commonalities and differences among global regions in terms of use cases, related KPIs and technological enablers. The work presented in this paper provides such a comparative study and analysis, highlighting the 6G vision of key stakeholders around the world and the ultimately adopted roadmap by ITU. Moreover, it offers key trends and insights related to the running projects of Europe’s Smart Networks and Services.
Use Cases for Local 6G Networks
Petri Ahokangas (University of Oulu, Finland); Marja Matinmikko-Blue (University of Oulu, Centre for Wireless Communications, Finland); Arturo Basaure (University of Oulu, Finland); Seppo Yrjölä (Nokia & Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland)
Local 6G mobile communication networks differ from the envisioned ‘generic’ 6G networks by being spatially constrained, use case specific, serving defined groups of users, and enabling different stakeholders of the mobile communications ecosystem to deploy and operate the networks. Introducing 6G’s new technological capabilities into the local context opens new use cases and business opportunities that set new requirements for developing future 6G networks. Yet, there is no prior work on the specific local 6G network use case. This paper contributes to 6G vision building and development by identifying, analyzing, and discussing local regional, local indoor, user-defined hyper-personalized, sensing and monitoring of humans, and intent-based use cases that are identified as specific use cases for local 6G mobile communication networks. The anticipatory action research approach method was utilized with a conceptual framework developed for designing future-proof 6G. We conclude that the term ‘local’ may be considered from the spatial, system, and user perspectives and recognize implications for developing future 6G networks, businesses, and regulation.
Complementarities and Externalities in 6G Platforms-Based Ecosystems
Seppo Yrjölä (Nokia & Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland); Petri Ahokangas (University of Oulu, Finland); Marja Matinmikko-Blue (University of Oulu, Centre for Wireless Communications, Finland)
This paper explores benefits and potential failures associated with the complementarities and externalities of the emerging 6G platform-based ecosystem. Envisioned 6G general-purpose technology platform grounded on open architecture with application layer interfaces has the potential to create complementary opportunities for a rich developer community, increasing network value, revenue, and the user experience. While 6G platforms and ecosystems provide efficiency gains and means to cope with the externalities compared to traditional contracting and vertical integration they may also embed severe value architecture failures. In the functional value architecture failure, joint value creation, value proposition and innovation do not match with the available resources and capabilities offered by the actors. As a consequence of the distributional failure, value in platforms and ecosystems is not captured proportional to the actor’s relational contribution. This paper identifies complementarities and externalities of platforms and ecosystems in 6G and characterized them from value creation and constraint perspectives. The main findings of the study highlight the ecosystem design principles related to exposure of 6G capabilities and recommend widening the 6G key values to consider the empowerment of the developers and users.
Towards 6G: Architectural Innovations and Challenges in the ORIGAMI Framework
Livia Elena Chatzieleftheriou (IMDEA Networks Institute, Spain); Marco Gramaglia (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain); Andres Garcia-Saavedra (NEC Labs Europe, Germany); Steffen Gebert (EMnify GmbH, Germany); Ginés Garcia-Aviles (i2CAT, Spain); Stefan Geissler (University of Wuerzburg, Germany); Marco Fiore (IMDEA Networks Institute, Spain); Paul Patras (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom (Great Britain)); Andra Lutu (Telefónica Research, Spain); Dimitris Tsolkas (Fogus Innovations and Services & National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece); Md Arifur Rahman (IS-Wireless, Poland)
As research in mobile networks is already transitioning from 5G to 6G, we identify a set of fundamental barriers in the current 5G architecture that limit efficient and global operations. We propose innovative architectural solutions that can remove such barriers and lay the foundation to 6G systems. Specifically, we introduce three novel architectural components: the Global Service-Based Architecture (GSBA), the Compute Continuum Layer (CCL), and the Zero-Trust Layer (ZTL). These components collectively aim at enhancing network efficiency, security, and scalability, addressing the dynamic and demanding needs of future mobile networks. The GSBA serves as a backbone, enabling seamless global connectivity and interoperability. The CCL integrates advanced computing resources, facilitating a more efficient and intelligent network processing. The ZTL focuses on robust security mechanisms, ensuring trust and reliability in interactions among operators, service providers and users. Furthermore, we delve into the integration of Network Intelligence (NI) that exploit the aforementioned architectural innovations to ensure actual global operations and services. Ultimately, our proposed vision entails a more adaptive, secure, and intelligent network architecture, setting the groundwork for the next generation of mobile networks.
Revisiting Data Recovery Loops in 6G Networks
Uyoata E. Uyoata (Aalborg University, Denmark); Abolfazl Amiri and Enric Juan (Nokia, Denmark); Guillermo Pocovi (Nokia Bell Labs, Denmark); Pilar Andres-Maldonado (Nokia, Denmark); Klaus Pedersen (Nokia – Bell Labs, Denmark); Troels E. Kolding (Nokia, Denmark)
Mechanisms for data recovery and packet reliability are essential components of the upcoming 6th generation (6G) communication system. In this paper, we evaluate the interaction between a fast hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) scheme, present in the physical and medium access control layers, and a higher layer automatic repeat request (ARQ) scheme which may be present in the radio link control layer. Through extensive system-level simulations, we show that despite its higher complexity, a fast HARQ scheme yields > 66% downlink average user throughput gains over simpler solutions without energy combining gains and orders of magnitude larger gains for users in challenging radio conditions. We present results for the design trade-off between HARQ and higher-layer data recovery mechanisms in the presence of realistic control and data channel errors, network delays, and transport protocols. We derive that, with a suitable design of 6G control and data channels reaching residual errors at the medium access control layer of 5×10−5 or better, a higher layer data recovery mechanism can be disabled. We then derive design targets for 6G control channel design, as well as promising enhancements to 6G higher layer data recovery to extend support for latency-intolerant services.
