Understanding the Research & Design Aspects for an Organic 6G Network Architecture
Tuesday, 7 June 2022, 9:00-10:30/11:00-12:30, Room A306
Speaker:
- Thomas Magedanz (TU Berlin / Fraunhofer FOKUS, DE)
- Marius Corici (TU Berlin / Fraunhofer FOKUS, DE)
Motivation and Context
6G research is just starting and thus, it is an excellent point in time to get started to actively shape this new technology ecosystem. Attendants should obtain a holistic overview of the state of play and gain knowledge on the multiple technologies and directions which will influence the 6G system.
The tutorial is a cross-technologies tutorial providing a fundament for the research activities in the 6G area. It gives a comprehensive perspective on the 6G technologies enabling the audience to enter into contact with other technologies in the R&D domain and expand the horizon towards the complete domain, through this giving the opportunity to understand what also other research branches are considering.
The globally recognized Fraunhofer FOKUS Open5GCore toolkit (www.open5GCore.org) will be used as an example on how 6G research could be enabled by existing open networking toolkits and how hands-on practical implementations enable to pin-point potential developments, underline potential technologies and the speakers will illustrate the research roadmap towards realizing a 6G-ready Core Network toolkit in current 6G research projects.
Structure and Content
Part I – Motivation for 6G and global 6G initiatives (30 minutes) This part provides an introduction and initial overview of the overall 6G research and development timeline and also it identifies the key global 6G research activities in Europe, Asia and the US.
Part II – Key technology drivers towards 6G (30 minutes) This part of the tutorial will address the different impacting application, business, and technology domains, such as:
- newly envisaged 6G application categories extending the 5G application domains (industrial vs. user applications, static vs. nomadic vs. mobile networks, etc. local vs. national vs. global networks)
- emerging business / operation models (public/national vs. enterprise/private campus networks)
- higher frequencies communications (sub-THz, THz and optic) enabling enhanced communications, positioning, and sensing
- satellite and Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) integration with 5G and 6G for coverage extensions, extra capacity and global, cross-country coverage
- evolution of network softwarization towards cloud-native network architectures pushing enabling DevOps and CD/CI mentalities for agile network provisioning
- RAN function virtualization, disaggregation driven by Open RAN stimulating the RAN-Core convergence
- core network evolution towards an organic end-to-end 6G data driven architecture, dynamically adapting to the momentary service requirements and infrastructure resources available
- emergence of a new Data Layer enabling AI-and ML-based network provisioning, operations, and management
- Reliability, Security, and Green ICT aspects
- Impacts of Quantum Key Exchange and Quantum Computing for security enhancements
- Q&A
Coffee Break (30 minutes)
Part III – Design Aspects for an Organic 6G Network (90 minutes) Based on the previous review of the state of the art in research and evolution trends the tutorial will concentrate in this part on the 5G core network evolution towards 6G. Therefore, the tutorial will look at:
- software development paradigms such as web services, micro-services, distributed data bases and shared memory systems, distribute synchronization functionality and the equivalent protocols as well as to software related elements underlining specific technology advancements which can provide an outstanding added value to the new 5G core networks.
- the re-consideration of mobility, QoS, authentication, authorization and access control functionality in the new 6G context underlining the progress which has to be achieved until 6G
- the core network functionality will be presented and assessed in the context of new deployments especially concentrating on the new use cases underlining the research activities which will have to be performed on the path towards a 6G system
- a careful assessment of the existing protocols and interfaces and the potential of innovation in the area of interface development
- the underlining of the new flexibility needed to adapt to the use case needs both during deployment and through the runtime phase and the options to reach this flexibility at software level
- the importance of properly granular system monitoring, data acquisition, data curation and data exchanges as fundamental technologies for extensive system automation
- the first elements of design towards a 6G core network, critical assessment of the functionality split and merging in the context of the newly developed technologies
Part IV – The Importance of Open 6G Testbeds & Conclusions (30 minutes) This section motivates the need for hands on realistic experimentation infrastructures when designing new network architectures. The globally recognized Fraunhofer FOKUS 5G Playground (5G-playground.org) and the related Open5GCore toolkit (www.open5GCore.org) will be used as an example on how 6G research could be enabled by existing open networking toolkits and how hands-on practical implementations enable to pin-point potential developments, underline potential technologies and the speakers will illustrate the research roadmap towards realizing a 6G-ready Core Network toolkit in current 6G research projects. An outline of the German BMBF 6G Hubs testbeds might be given depending on project progress at the point in time of tutorial presentation. Visit the www.6G-ready.org website and see the short video and listed R&D topics.
Final Q&A Session
