Creating a sandbox for experiments and extending reality
Mobile video research and development specialist InterDigital is to run five 6G research projects that will investigate the options for experimental infrastructures in 6G. InterDigital’s research is part of a portfolio of 35 research, innovation and trial projects curated by the EU’s Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) to evolve from today’s fragile 5G ecosystems, such as they are, into 6G. Jointly led by the European Commission and 6G-IA industry association, the SNS JU is responsible for fostering European leadership and technology sovereignty in 6G while boosting 5G deployment across the European continent. The programme of 6G flagship projects has been funded with €250 million.
InterDigital’s mission is to explore novel technologies and system designs for commercial networks in the medium or long term, as well as developing EU-wide ‘sandboxes’ in which experiments can be conducted to validate technical 6G enablers. In a release, InterDigitial has released information on five of the missions under the project names Centric, Predict, Shine, Extended Reality and Bricks. Operation Centric should develop radio access technologies that support a 6G user centric Artificial Intelligence (AI) native air interface. Predict-6G must lay the foundations of an AI-powered Digital Twin framework to predict the behaviour of the end-to-end 6G network, in order to improve the reliability and time sensitivity of the network.
Researchers in the 6G-Shine team will design short-range communication protocols that can meet the extreme bandwidth, latency and energy needed by 6G. The 6G-XR project has to create the experimental research infrastructure to evaluate and validate the performance of key 6G candidate technologies. Finally, the 6G-Bricks project will set up an experimental research facility to evaluate two key 6G candidate technologies, namely Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) and cell-free massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO).
InterDigital’s research heritage and expertise will shape 6G development in Europe according to CEO Rajesh Pankaj. “A competitive research environment helps drive our industry forward by pushing the limits of what is possible in wireless technology,” said Pankaj.