Building Reusable testbed Infrastructures for validating Cloud-to-device breakthrough technologies
Overview
6G networks are envisioned as portals to a fully digitised society, where the physical and virtual world are blended via boundless Extended Reality, and as enablers for the Digital and Green transformation of European Industries. To realise this vision, a significant challenge lies in significantly increasing network capacity by at least an order of magnitude while also transforming existing infrastructures into a highly dense and seamlessly connected continuum. Academia and industry must now investigate a new generation of Smart Networks and infrastructures to support the changing landscape. It is clear that succeeding in the race towards the next-generation communication ecosystem requires a new generation of testbed infrastructures, alongside breakthrough research and technological innovation. Equally important is the establishment of advanced testbeds to support and sustain future research initiatives.
To this end, 6G-BRICKS seeks to build upon mature ICT-52 platforms to develop a new 6G experimentation facility, incorporating cutting-edge cell-free and RIS technologies with strong potential in beyond 5G networks. Moreover, it will explore novel unified control paradigms based on Explainable AI and Machine Reasoning. 6G-BRICKS will deliver enablers in the form of reusable components with open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), referred to as “bricks.” Initial integrations with O-RAN will be performed to ensure interoperability.
Objectives
Deliver an evolvable 6G experimentation facility that will integrate breakthrough 6G technologies and federate two testbeds under a common set of experimentation tools.
Validate and showcase advanced use cases in holographic communication, metaverse and digital twinning, showcasing the benefits of 6G breakthrough technologies and architecture.
Support disaggregated and programmable Software-Defined Infrastructures (SDIs), adopting virtualisation, softwarisation and O-RAN compliant interfaces to promote modularity and reusability.
Offer a fully decentralised management plane, supporting zero-touch orchestration of computing and communication resources based on Explainable AI.
Offer a Compute Continuum abstraction framework supporting a disaggregated wireless X-Haul.
Deliver breakthrough technologies towards a 6G RAN via Distributed Cell-free and RIS.
Provide a secure and trusted Experimentation Facility for multiple concurrent tenants and experimentation platforms.
Maximise the impact created by the project through wide means of dissemination, communication, standardisation and exploitation activities.
eBOS Role in the Project
eBOS will lead the Dissemination and Communication activities of 6G-BRICKS and will create and maintain the project’s website. This entails contributing, along with partner support, to the promotion and communication of 6G-BRICKS key results in a manner that maximises visibility and impact for the industry, research community, academia, policymakers, the private sector, and the general public. Furthermore, eBOS will also serve as the Open Call manager of the project, responsible for preparing and disseminating the two open calls organised as part of the project. eBOS will lead the selection process and the signature process for the SubGrant Agreement for over 13 sub-projects during the two rounds of calls.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
