SUSTAIN-6G consortium is to explore 6G technologies, methods and use cases and solutions for energy smart grids, e-health and telemedicine, and agriculture
Nokia announced that the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) has selected Nokia to be the coordinator of the SUSTAIN-6G lighthouse project. The SNS-JU is a public-private partnership funded by the European Commission.
Nokia will lead a consortium that will identify what role 6G can play in sustainable technologies for the environment, economic activity and wider society.
One of the main goals of SUSTAIN-6G is to develop use cases for three targeted areas, drawn from the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals:
- Energy smart grid – how 6G could be used to create microgrids that manage demand for electricity and an investigation into how AI technologies could help real-time control of distribution networks. This aim is to create more efficient, flexible and resilient grids to minimise disruptions, including by drawing energy from diverse sources as the world transitions to renewables.
- E-Health and telemedicine – generating new ideas on how 6G can make digital health more inclusive, such as by providing a far-reaching infrastructure for securely transmitting and analysing medical data. It also could be the foundation for home-based, online assessment services to improve diagnoses and treatment in underserved communities. Meanwhile AI could help detect disease outbreaks at early stages.
- Agriculture – the consortium will investigate how 6G connectivity could be allocated on a temporary basis for smart agricultural applications that need high bandwidth, sensing, telemetry, data analytics and automation. For instance, 6G’s edge cloud capabilities could handle high-priority automation tasks for farming equipment during harvest. Another possibility might be integrating data from field sensors, climate stations, soil analysis and satellite imagery to provide contextualised information during the growing season.
SUSTAIN-6G is the third major European 6G research consortium that Nokia has been selected to lead. The others are Hexa-X and Hexa-X-II, which laid the groundwork for 6G pre-standardisation and use cases respectively.
SUSTAIN-6G has representation from industry and academia. The consortium includes network equipment and services vendors, communications services providers, industrial equipment manufacturers, European research institutions and universities, and many small-and medium-sized enterprises. SUSTAIN-6G will kick off in January of 2025 and is scheduled to complete its work in 2027.
Peter Merz, Vice President of Nokia Standards, said, “The UN Paris Agreement committed the world to combatting climate change. Every industry must do its part. SUSTAIN-6G will show how the communications industry will apply the next generation of networking to creating that sustainable future, overcoming not just environmental challenges but societal and economic challenges as well.”
