Challenge
6G networks, currently only existing as concepts, are envisioned as portals to a fully digitised society, where the physical and virtual world are blended via boundless Extended Reality, and also as an enabler for the Digital and Green transformation of European Industries. To support this vision, the network capacity must be increased at least by an order of magnitude, while infrastructures must be transformed into a very dense continuum. Thus, academia and industry have shifted their attention to the investigation of a new generation of Smart Networks and infrastructures. It is clear that to win this race towards shaping the next-generation communication ecosystem, a new generation of testbed infrastructures and breakthrough research and technology development is needed, as well as a new generation of testbeds to support future research initiatives.
To this end, 6G-BRICKS aims to deliver a new 6G experimentation facility, building on the baseline of mature ICT-52 platforms, that bring breakthrough cell-free and RIS technologies which have shown promise in beyond 5G networks. Moreover, novel unified control paradigms based on Explainable AI and Machine Reasoning are explored. All enablers will be delivered in the form of reusable components with open APIs, termed “bricks”. Initial integrations with O-RAN will be performed, aiming for the future-proofing and interoperability of 6G-BRICKS outcomes.
Project Objectives
To deliver an evolvable 6G experimentation facility that will integrate breakthrough 6G technologies and federate two testbeds under a common set of experimentation tools.
To validate and showcase advanced use cases in holographic communication, metaverse and digital twinning, showcasing the benefits of 6G breakthrough technologies and architecture.
To 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 compute 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.
Role in the Project
eBOS is involved in the Dissemination and Communication activities of the project. This entails contributing, along with partner support, towards the promotion and communication of its key results, in a fashion that will maximise visibility and impact, to industry, the research community, academia, policymakers, the private sector and the general public in an easy and comprehensible format and interaction.
Furthermore, eBOS is the Open Call manager of the project, responsible for preparing and disseminating the two open calls organised by the project. eBOS will lead the selection process and the SubGrant Agreement signature process for over 13 sub-projects between the two rounds of calls.
Consortium
6G-BRICKS project has received funding from the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grand Agreement No 101096954.
