By Sebastian Robitzsch (InterDigital Europe Ltd), with the collaboration of Rafael Rosales (INTEL), Petro Giardina (Nextworks), and Luis M. Contreras (Telefónica).

One of the key exploitation routes in PREDICT-6G is the impact of relevant Standardisation Development Organisations (SDOs) on the topic of deterministic networking. For that purpose, the project conducted a thorough assessment of the architectural proposition [1] as well as their Multi-Domain Data Plane (MDP) [2] and AI-Driven Control Plane (AICP) [3]. The outcome of this assessment resulted in a scientific paper which was accepted for presentation at the GLOBECOM 2024 Workshop on 6G Architecture (6G Arch) that will take place in December 2024 in South Africa.  The paper provides a holistic drawing of PREDICT-6G system proposition with the considered domains DetNet-Enabled 3GPP, TSN-Enabled 3GPP, Wi-Fi and TSN. The assessment of which SDO covers which system components is then overlayed in the figure and colour coding is used to depict the assessment; the figure below provides this assessment.

As one can observe, all key SDOs in the telecommunication space show up, i.e. 3GPP, IETF, IEEE and ETSI. Below, a selected set of SDO working groups (WGs) provide more insights on the standardisation activities of PREDICT-6G partners and the technology developed within the project.

IETF PCE

Telefónica (TID) and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) have been contributing to the IETF Path Computation Element (PCE) WG with the objective of extend the PCE so that can consider metrics defined statistically. With the current state of the art, the PCE is able of determining paths according to constraints expressed in the form of metrics.  The value of the metric can be signalled as a bound or maximum, meaning that path metric must be less than or equal such value.  While this can be sufficient for certain services, some others, such as deterministic services, can require the utilisation of Precision Availability Metrics (PAM). The PREDICT-6G contribution aims to define a new PCE object, namely the PRECISION METRIC object, to be used for path calculation or selection for deterministic networking services with performance requirements expressed as Service Level Objectives (SLO) using PAM.

IEEE 802.11

To improve determinism in Wi-Fi communications, Intel has proposed ideas to the 802.11 UHR Working Group (Wi-Fi 8) at the IEEE 802.11-23/0936r0 meeting in July 2023. The ideas are related to a medium efficient scheduled channel access in next generation 802.11. The proposed ideas could help to improve triggered and scheduled channel access for better medium utilization with: a) re-structure transmission opportunity to efficiently schedule bursty traffic together with others. b) upfront resource allocation/assignment, and c) reduction of OTA signalling overhead by reusing repeating information.

ETSI ISG MEC

During 2023/2024, Nextworks proposed and discussed some extensions to the ETSI MEC GS 037 related to the support of container-based applications, in several ETSI MEC ISG meetings. These extensions aim at enabling the support of a variety of industrial container-based applications, which can be orchestrated at the edge of the network, empowering the reliability while reducing the latency, in line with the industry requirements for wireless networks. Furthermore, the software containerization allows the orchestration of the applications faster than the correspondent in virtual machines, significantly reducing the relocation time and service downtime. The proposed extensions have been accepted.

ETSI ISG ISAC

The latest ETSI ISG on Integration Sensing and Communications (ISAC) received a use case by InterDigital on Digital Twinning-based collaborative robots, with stringent communications requirements to exchange sensing data between terminals and the network in a deterministic fashion. This use case has now been adopted and forms the basis for challenges and proposed solutions in the system space of 6G mobile systems.

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[1] – D1.2 PREDICT-6G framework architecture and initial specification, available at: https://zenodo.org/records/12167838

[2] – D2.2 Implementation of selected release 1 PREDICT-6G MDP innovations, available at: https://zenodo.org/records/12167751

[3] – D3.2 Implementation of selected release 1 AI-driven inter-domain network control, management and orchestration innovations, available at: https://zenodo.org/records/12167665