Workshop 4

Workshop 42024-03-25T11:05:26+00:00

Strengthening EU-US Cooperation in Experimental Infrastructures Towards 6G

Date, hour and room to be defined
Organisers:
  • Serge Fdida (Sorbonne Univ., FR)
  • Abhimanyu Gosain (Northeastern Univ., US)
  • Luis Pessoa (INESC TEC, PT)
  • Odysseas Pyrovolakis (SNS JU,)

Motivation and Background

Various countries and regions have already initiated official programmes with government support for their research and development efforts towards 6G. One of the primary missions of this workshop is to join EU and US stakeholders from industry, government, and academia to discuss the mission and vision of test facilities, including reference design, data curation and sharing and reproducibility issues. The enabling technologies such as the convergence between the network and the compute through virtualization, load distribution, AI/ML and Cloud SaaS offer us the opportunity to design & implement large and distributed physical and digital platforms for at-scale research and experimentation. This trend is going to impact the telecommunication and computer-based sectors, from system design to products and operations, and this is where the testbeds meet the network as a fully controllable, programmable virtualized test platform. Experimentation is becoming an even more important methodology to assess and qualify the diverse design assumptions and choices in realistic conditions. It is now timely not only to strengthen existing facilities ready for 5G Advanced testing but most importantly start developing early 6G platforms as most components are software-based. This is the motivation for developing a holistic approach where all resources (compute, storage, network) are associated to continuously design, integrate, test, operate and automate the full life cycle management of applications and services. Such platforms will allow researchers and industry to question scientific challenges regarding the future technologies and services. It is important to note that initiatives exist at the international level with ambitious projects and programmes like EU ESFRI SLICES (2021-2040, 250M€), EC SNS-JU (2022-2030, 900 M€), in the US (NSF PAWR 2017-2022 100M$, NSF FABRIC 2019-2024 20M€), BRIDGES (2021-2024, 2.5M$) and China (CENI 018-2022 190M€), and efforts also developing in Japan. Joint initiatives such as the publication in January 2024 of the document “EU US Beyond 5G & 6G Roadmap” involving the ATIS Next G Alliance from the US side and 6G-IA from the EU side further reveal the commitment of these regions to collaborating in the development of 6G networks.
The successful EU EMPOWER CSA project (2018-2022) reinforced the cooperation between the EU and the US towards establishing a collaborative transatlantic community on the new connectivity frontiers beyond 5G, accelerating the joint development of the associated advanced wireless platforms. Three EMPOWER workshops were organized during EuCNC & 6GS 2019, 2022 and 2023. The collaboration between the EU and the US has been/is furthered following the contractual end of the EMPOWER project and is now currently implemented in the context of the SNS and SLICES programmes.

Structure

The workshop will follow a half day structure (2 Conference Slots). The ongoing work of key Stream-C SNS Phase 1 and 2 projects and their NSF PAWR counterparts will be presented, with a focus on the need or value for collaboration opportunities and joint activities between EU SLICES / SNS-JU and US / NSF PAWR projects. Finally, time will be devoted to understanding the requirements from users of the sites, in terms of equipment and services. The workshop will be mainly driven by EU SLICES, EU SNS-JU and NSF PAWR representatives. A preliminary agenda is provided below:

Session 1: Opening (30min)
Presentation by Luis Pessoa (INESC TEC).
Presentation by Odysseas Pyrovolakis (SNS-JU).

Session 2: Presentation of the EU and US platforms (1)
Presentation from SLICES, by Serge Fdida (Sorbonne University).
Presentation from 6G-SANDBOX by Michael Dieudonne (Keysight).
Presentation from SUNRISE-6G and 6G-BRICKS by Christos Verikoukis (IST/ATHENA).
Presentation from CONVERGE by Luis Pessoa (INESC TEC).

Coffee break

Session 3: Presentations of EU and US platforms (2)
Presentation from COLOSSEUM RF Digital Twin platform, by Tommaso Melodia (Northeastern Univ).
Presentation from POWDER-RENEW by Edward Knightly (Rice University)
Presentation 6G-XCEL by Dan Kilper (Trinity College Dublin)

Session 4: EU and US Programmes
Presentation from the SNS JU on related Platforms and EU-US
Cooperation, by Odysseas Pyrovolakis (SNS-JU).
Presentation from US Programme, by Edward Knightly (Rice University).

Round Table
Round table of representatives of EC and US Platforms. Active discussion on the future of the Platforms and their expected technology evolution.
Moderator(s)
Odysseas Pyrovolakis (SNS-JU).
Edward Knightly (Rice University).

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