One of the main intentions of PREDICT-6G is to quickly harness the multiplier capacity of initiatives advocating for 6G in Europe. Creating synergies with other projects funded by Horizon Europe under the same topic is a unique opportunity to build a real impactful European 6G landscape. Let’s discover one of them: DETERMINISTIC6G!

DETERMINISTIC6G aims at developing an end-to-end deterministic communication architecture enabling innovative 6G use cases.  The concept of deterministic communication being the property of guaranteeing communication latency and reliability is central to the project. Ensuring sufficient end-to-end communication reliability remains a challenge for cellular networks in an industrial context. 

A primary focus of the project will be on the interplay between future 6G networks with highly time-synchronized networks called Time Sensitive Networking (TSN). The challenge in these settings is that wireless systems like 6G can be subject to strong random variations, which is incompatible with technologies like TSN. DETERMINISTIC6G will tackle this problem by a combination of new wireless transmission design and advanced machine learning algorithms, leading to 6G wireless transmission with deterministic latency behavior. In addition to this, the project will also consider consequences and novel approaches for time synchronization, network security as well as the integration of computational nodes into the 6G systems.

Current developments in 5G integrate time-sensitive networking (TSN) and deterministic networking (DetNet) as deterministic communication mechanisms, however, they are not designed to support end-to-end (E2E) deterministic communication over heterogeneous infrastructures. Driven by pivotal 6G visionary use cases, the main concepts under-pinning the design of the DETERMINISTIC6G solution are:

  1. New architectures and protocols ensuring the efficient and secure integration of 6G systems into deterministic communication contexts.
  2. AI/ML based data-driven models for latency characterization in 6G wireless system
  3. leveraging novel digital twins of both 6G networks and cyber-physical systems to anticipate situational circumstances impacting determinism. 
  4. Devise security-by-design mechanism for deterministic communication including the integration of edge computing and the support of OPC UA. 

DETERMINISTIC6G builds on the wired deterministic communication standards to support end-to-end deterministic communication over heterogeneous networks. The expected outcomes of the project include:

  • 6G architecture and interfaces allowing dynamic interactions in integrated heterogeneous infrastructure.
  • Integration and interworking with deterministic standards over wired (TSN & DetNet) and wireless communication infrastructure.
  • Concepts of an open controllability framework for time-critical services operating dynamically over multiple heterogeneous domains including edge computing as well as wired and wireless domains.
  • An architecture for innovative 6G use cases based on security-by-design principles that provide capabilities to support deterministic wireless 6G transmission.
  • New data-driven ML methods for 6G system providing probabilistic latency guarantees at run-time.
  • E2E time awareness for supporting the deterministic operations.
  • Unified service provisioning through integration with an advanced industrial application framework (OPC UA FX) to provide service to several industry verticals.
  • Algorithms that leverage the information base of 6G digital twins and CPS digital twin in order to maintain E2E guarantees but also application-layer features such as safety.

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