Deterministic comms
Ten collaborators led by Ericsson and the Swedish KTH Royal Institute of Technology are trying to resolve the unpredictability of 6G so that it can run time sensitive applications. The next generation of mobile networking has reliability issues that need addressing before its end-to-end connections between users, processes and cyber world digital representations can be relied upon.
The Deterministic6G (D6G) project is an Ericsson-KTH inspired six-million-euro mission to make wireless networks run new applications for industrial automation, manufacturing, transport, medicine and entertainment. Guaranteeing latency and reliability through deterministic communication is the plan with the focus on the interplay between future 6G networks with highly time-synchronised networks, AKA Time Sensitive Networking (TSN).
The inherent problem is that wireless systems like 6G can be subject to strong random variations, which are incompatible with time synchronisation, as Ericsson explained in a release. D6G will tackle this problem with a new wireless transmission design and advanced machine learning algorithms. Ultimately, this will result in 6G wireless transmission that displays deterministic latency behaviour. The project will also explore new approaches to time synchronisation, their consequences and network security. The integration of computational nodes into 6G systems will also be researched.
Magnus Frodigh, VP and head of research at Ericsson Research, said he has high expectations of the combined expertise of the wired and wireless domains and together they can shape the way time-critical applications work within 6G networks, said Frodigh.
“This project can shape the technological foundations of future 6G systems,” said James Gross, a professor with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science School at KTH and the project’s technical manager.
In October 2022, Ericsson expanded its 6G collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin, with an examination of latency and spacial mapping as both parties explore 6G-powered extended reality (XR). That particular research focuses on the challenge of guaranteeing bounded latency while simultaneously maximising spectral efficiency and capacity both indoors and outdoors, while achieving perceptually optimised streaming to XR devices. The research seeks to develop systems that can be used to scale up XR use cases in the 6G generation. The cross-discipline research team includes leading experts in applications (media encoding and streaming), sensing and communication.
“XR is already here but has a huge potential to go even further with the eventual arrival of 6G,” said Eric Wang, Ericsson ‘s Project Research Leader. “Ericsson wants to ensure users have the best XR experience even as the number of connected devices and demands of the applications increase.”
Ericsson said that work on the European Commission’s (EC) 6G research project, Hexa-X-II, will continue. While Nokia is the project leader for Hexa-X-II, Ericsson is the project’s technical manager. Orange, Telecom Italia, TU Dresden, University of Oulu, IMEC and Atos are coordinating work packages on the project, which aims to start work in January, with a planned duration of 2.5 years.
The D6G consortium consists of ten partners including Ericsson, Orange, B&R, IUVO, and SSSA, KTH, University of Stuttgart, Silicon Austria Labs, Cumucore and Montimage.