IEEE ICC 2023 “Sustainable Communications for Renaissance”
In the last week of May, Nextworks -member of the PREDICT-6G Consortium- participated in the IEEE ICC Conference as an exhibitor, with a dedicated booth where the company showcased R&D activities and results of past and ongoing research projects. It was a nice opportunity to discuss with partners and potential customers the latest research activities of the company in H2020, Horizon Europe and ESA projects, presenting results on management and orchestration for 5G/6G infrastructures, integration of satellite technology in 5G networks, edge-cloud continuum, IoT platforms and AI solutions for Industry 4.0 and Quantum Key Distribution.
The IEEE ICC is a capital event, one of the two flagship conferences of the IEEE ComSoc together with Globecom, attracting participants from dozens of countries around the world, both from Academia and Industry. This year’s edition, entitled “Sustainable Communication for Renaissance”, was held in Rome, at La Nuvola Convention Centre, and it brought together more than 2,000 delegates. The conference had 6G as central topic, addressing technical aspects like security, reliability and trustworthiness, network automation, radio interface, integration of Non-Terrestrial Networks, and discussing new use cases, vertical sectors and business scenarios for 6G, with a continuous and transversal attention to the sustainability of the network. Artificial Intelligence and Digital Twinning, crucial technology enablers for PREDICT-6G have been also widely discussed in several workshops and keynotes, with active participation from vendors and network operators. The exhibition area, with more than 30 booths set up by companies, research institutes, consortia and projects, was able to concentrate a heterogenous multitude of people, interested in a variety of topics and research activities, in one place.
In this context, Nextworks had the opportunity to present the PREDICT-6G concepts and technologies for predictable and deterministic services in 6G infrastructures, attracting attention from researchers and technology providers in the area of TSN and Industrial IoT. During the 5-day conference, there was the opportunity to discuss the project at different levels of technical detail, from the most basic concepts ("What is predictability?", "What is a deterministic network?") to the more complex topics, which are still being discussed even among the project participants. One of the main elements that sparked interest in the audience is the aim of PREDICT-6G of creating determinism across different network technologies in a transparent manner. Indeed, such an ambitious goal implies a strong cooperation between experts working on Data and Control planes, to address together challenges that covers aspects of packet ordering and time synchronisation, up to virtualization and abstraction for seamless orchestration of E2E deterministic connectivity over heterogenous networks.
Another important question received was “Why?”, what is the applicability of PREDICT-6G. Determinism is a crucial characteristic for industrial networks and in the era of mobility and network pervasiveness, manufacturing industries are more and more connected and remotely managed. As such, they are perfect early adopter for PREDICT-6G technologies. The presence of big manufacturers in PREDICT-6G consortium will be crucial to identify their key requirements and validate the solutions that will be developed in the project in realistic environments able to replicate operational conditions.
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PREDICT-6G at Data Week 2023
The Data Week is the spring gathering of the European Big Data and Data Driven AI research and innovation communities. The 2023 edition ¨Data meets infrastructure at the edge¨ took place from the 13th to the 19th of June 2023 in Luleå, Sweden. During the event, the participants shared knowledge and results, discussed topics of common interest, found synergies, built new collaborations, and identified new challenges and recommendations. Data Week is also a great opportunity to link the communities and their results to European policies and market needs and brings European initiatives and activities closer to local communities.
On the 14th of June, PREDICT-6G and VERGE, both EU projects supported by the SNS JU and funded under the Horizon Europe programme, co-organised the session “AI-native data management for robustness and sustainability”. In this session, the two projects alongside a very promising start-up (QBEAST), a well-known European research institute (Insight-centre), and corporation programme (Intel Ignite) elaborated on several aspects of what are the expected benefits brought by AI in different fields.
Dr Valerio Frascolla, Director of Research and Innovation at Intel and PREDICT-6G Innovation Manager, ran the session and Prof. Antonio de la Oliva, PREDICT-6G Coordinator, gave the presentation “Determinism and Robustness as pillars of future production sites”, focusing on the main aspects of PREDICT-6G. “The workshop was very interesting. It has been a pleasure to confront our ideas with people from several industries and backgrounds which are not always aligned with our view”, said Prof. de la Oliva.
A panel run by Dr Frascolla was held at the end of the session, to answer questions from the audience and exchange points of view with and among speakers. Attendance of the session was people from industry academia, European Commission and other public bodies.
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Data Week 2023 is co-organised by BDVA and EUHubs4Data project in collaboration with the Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE). Data Week is the combination of local and regional events organised by the BDVA i-Spaces [i-Spaces] in the framework of the EUHubs4Data project and the main European event.
PREDICT-6G at the 2023 EuCNC & 6G Summit
The 2023 EuCNC & 6G Summit took place from the 6th to the 9th of June 2023 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Combining two of Europe’s premier events in communication networks: the European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC), supported by the European Commission, and the 6G Summit, originated from the 6G Flagship programme in Finland, one of the very first in its area; the event has become one of the most important in the sector. It brings together cutting-edge research and world-renown industries and businesses to present, discuss and showcase the latest developments in the sector.
PREDICT-6G attended numerous exciting keynotes, panels, sessions, workshops, tutorials, as well as the outstanding social programme. It also visited the exhibition, gathering more than 70 exhibitors, many of which were projects funded by EU R&I programmes displaying their scientific and technological achievements.
On the 6th of June, Dr. Valerio Frascolla had the pleasure to chair the workshop “Future deterministic programmable networks for 6G”, a joint endeavour of PREDICT-6G and its two sister projects DESIRE6G and DETERMINISTIC6G. With the aim of opening a space for debate on the different approaches to determinism being pursued, the workshop brought together speakers from the three projects to present the main research topics being investigated to an audience of 70 people.
Dr Afif Osseiran, vice-chair of 5G-ACIA, gave a keynote address ¨5G-ACIA: learnings on 5G for industries” highlighting the lessons learnt on 5G networks for the industry, which provided a great perspective in the development of 6G.
The workshop wrapped up with a panel discussion enlightening how the future deterministic 6G networks will be realised. “The workshop was important not only for the PREDICT-6G team, but also for a broader audience as it reported the work of several EU-funded projects”, says Dr Frascolla.
On behalf of PREDICT-6G, Milan Groshev presented an special session on the importance of predictability determinism in 6G in the Speakers’ Corner set up in the exhibition. “It was an enormous pleasure to represent our project and see the interesting presentations from different researchers that work on deterministic networks. We had a great discussion regarding what predictability and determinism are and the existing open challenges that have to be addressed in order to bring this concept to the wireless domain” stated Groshev.
As the event concluded, Antonio de la Oliva, PREDICT-6G coordinator weighed in on the last days: "I have been very happy to participate in the 2023 edition of EuCNC, tightening relations with our peer research projects and the overall ecosystem. Worth to say, this has been one of the best organised EuCNCs I have participated in”.
You can find the workshop presentations here.
The 2023 EuCNC & 6G Summit is sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc), the European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP) and the European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP) and focuses on all aspects of telecommunications ranging from 5G deployment and mobile IoT to 6G exploration and future communications systems and networks, including experimentation and testbeds, and applications and services. It brings together cutting-edge research and world-renown industries and businesses, globally attracting in the last years more than 1 300 delegates from more than 40 countries all over the world.
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PREDICT-6G hosts its second plenary meeting
The 23rd and 24th of May, the PREDICT-6G Consortium met in Madrid to host its second plenary meeting . Two fruitful days used by the members of the team to review what we have accomplished over the past five months and to set the roadmap for the coming months.
The meeting, hosted at the premises of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (the coordinator of the Project), took place over two days, during which the Work Package and Tasks leaders presented the progress made to date, as well as the future impulses needed to achieve each of the objectives set. There was also time to plan for PREDICT-6G's upcoming participation in international conferences, such as the European Conference on Networks and Communications 2023 (EuCNC) where the project will organize the joint workshop titled “Future deterministic programmable networks for 6G”.
“During the Madrid May meeting we have pushed substantially the work on PREDICT-6G, clarifying the key technical aspects on the control and data plane to realise multi-domain, multi-technology determinism”, said Antonio de la Oliva, the coordinator of PREDICT-6G.
Finally, the consortium visited the 5Tonic Open Lab, where two of the project’s use cases will be tested: the Multi-domain deterministic communication use case and the Smart Manufacturing use case.
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Future deterministic programmable networks for 6G, a joint workshop
The three EU funded project DESIRE6G, DETERMINISTIC6G and PREDICT6G are developing new technologies to tackle determinism at a global scale in the yet to be defined 6G architecture.
A joint workshop titled "Future deterministic programmable networks for 6G" is organized by these projects at the European Conference on Networks and Communications 2023 (EuCNC). EuCNC focuses on telecommunications aspects ranging from 5G deployment to 6G exploration and future communications systems and networks. The aim of this workshop is to open a space for discussion of the different approaches to determinism that these projects are choosing while discussing open points and possible collaboration topics. The workshop takes place on Tuesday, 6 June 2023, 14:00-17:30 where Dr. Afif Osseiran, vice-chair 5G-ACIA gives a Keynote on the “learnings on 5G for industries”. Members of the three projects will present key research topics being investigated under these projects. A panel discussion will wrap up the workshop enlightening how the future deterministic 6G networks will be realized.
Check the programme here.
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2023 EUCnC & 6G Summit 6G for a Green and Digital Transition
PREDICT-6G, together with DETERMINISTC-6G and DESIRE-6G, will present a joint workshop titled “Future deterministic programmable networks for 6G” in the context of the 2023 EUCnC & 6G Summit, which will take place the 6-9 of June in Gothenburg, Sweden.
The workshop will address the concepts being developed by the three projects, which will enable future 6G deterministic programmable networks, and will open a space for discussing the different approaches to determinism explored by each project. Experts on the field will be invited to provide their view on the different deterministic and programmable approaches for WLAN, IEEE 802.1TSN, DetNet, OPC, and 3GPP TSC.
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Introducing DESIRE6G, a sister project of PREDICT-6G
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: DESIRE6G!
Promoting the 6G vision, the DESIRE6G project will design and develop a novel zero touch control, management, and orchestration platform, with native integration of AI, to support verticals with extreme requirements (e.g., eXtreme URLLC services) over a performant, measurable and programmable data plane.
From zero power to extreme low latency or ultra-high reliability: the 6G system should not limit its future use cases, yet it should be simpler and more autonomous than the previous generation. The two key components that will allow DESIRE6G achieving these goals are the following:
- A lightweight centralised Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) layer, with distributed and coordinated intelligent control employing Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). This functional split promotes service assurance through enabling faster control loops, ensuring the scalability of the system as its self-operation relies mainly on the autonomous coordinated operation of the agents.
- An end-to-end programmable user plane supporting multitenancy, using a hardware abstraction layer to interact with the heterogeneous devices e.g., GPUs, TPUs, FPGAs, SOCs. This will facilitate increased flexibility in function placement and offloading while using simple and abstract control plane APIs. It will also allow simpler customization of end-to-end network behaviour without sacrificing performance and power efficiency.
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If “Higher Throughput and Lower Latency” Is the Answer, What Is the Question
By Dr Sebastian Robitzsch, InterDigital Europe Ltd
It is anticipated that 6G standardisation will start in 2025 and the industry is already sharpening their tools, noticeable in the various 6G-related themes at exhibitions, panels and conferences to kickstart the conversation what 6G is all about. In particular, the pre-standardisation work is already running at full steam in bodies such as ETSI and NGMN, focusing on technologies and requirements. With the first phase of 6GIA’s SNS projects kicked off earlier this year, such as PREDICT-6G, the European community is contributing to the global 6G technology and standardisation process.
Any conversation around the “next G” is rooted in its requirements and use cases, followed by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to quantify any “next G” technology against the promises made. 6G is no different in that approach and 3GPP has already seen numerous technical reports which study services that can be categorised as 6G, when looking at the 2025 timeframe.
One of the dominant use cases in that regard is one or a mix of augmented, virtual, extended reality (AR/VR/XR) services, which demand the typical KPIs around throughput, latency, jitter, reliability, etc. to be further pushed to new limits. 3GPP is working on a feasibility study for these services [1] and Table 1 provides a summary assessment for KPIs. In addition to the work in 3GPP, the IETF MOPS WG [2] also provides additional values which have been folded into the KPIs in Table 1. As can be seen, three service types have been identified, i.e. video, audio and haptic, and a set of KPIs with detailed upper bound numbers for each of them.
Table 1: Key Performance Indicators for Remote Collaboration [1,2].
| KPI | Video | Audio | Haptics |
| Throughput [kbit/s] | 2500 – 200000 | 64 – 512 | 512 – 1024 |
| Jitter [ms] | ≤ 30 | ≤ 30 | ≤ 2 |
| Latency [ms] | ≤ 100 (lip sync limit)
≤ 150 (preferred) ≤ 400 (limit) |
≤ 150 | ≤ 50 |
| Packet Loss [%] | ≤ 1 | ≤ 1 | ≤ 10 |
| Update Rate [Hz] | ≥ 30 | ≥ 50 | ≥ 1000 |
| Packet Size [bytes] | ≤ MTU | 160 – 320 | 64 – 128 |
| Reliability [%] | 99.9 | 99.99999 | 99.999999 |
However, one can certainly argue that 5G is capable to deliver on these KPIs from a technology perspective, considering the option of private network deployments (aka Non-Public Networks), which enable fine-tuned network deployments towards service-specific packet deliveries [3]. That is why the added KPIs in [1], around inter-service-type delay numbers defining upper bound numbers of how much later a service type can arrive after another one, can be considered as impossible to request and deliver in 5G systems. Additionally, pre-standardisation bodies such as NGMN and 5G-PPP share a common understanding beyond a purely KPI-driven conversation on 6G requirements via added Key Value Indicators (KVIs)[4,5]. The rational here is to allow a value-driven conversation around innovations in 6G instead of a KPI one. And PREDICT-6G is not different in that regard by focusing on the three pillars of deterministic communications, i.e. predictability, reliability and time sensitivity; these three pillars are considered in a multi-domain scenario and in an end-to-end fashion.
When considering the KPIs provided in Table 1 and adding the ability to deterministically control the communication on the User Plane, the KVI conversation around the “added value” to 6G becomes the centre argument and a key differentiator to 5G. Thus, AR/VR/XR use cases provide an ideal narrative for the importance of deterministic communications in PREDICT-6G and the wider pre-standardisation community.
| [1] | 3GPP, “Technical Report 23.856: Feasibility Study on Localized Mobile Metaverse Services (Release 19)”, Nov 2022. |
| [2] | R. Krishna and A. Rahman, “Media Operations Use Case for an Extended Reality Application on Edge Computing Infrastructure”, Online: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-mops-ar-use-case/ |
| [3] | 5G-PPP Technology Board, “Non-Public-Networks – State of the art and way forward”, Nov 2022. Online: https://5g-ppp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/WhitePaperNPN_MasterCopy_V1.pdf |
| [4] | NGMN, “6G Requirements and Design Considerations”, Feb 2023. Online: https://www.ngmn.org/wp-content/uploads/NGMN_6G_Requirements_and_Design_Considerations.pdf |
| [5] | 5G-PPP, “Beyond 5G/6G KPIs and Target Values”, Jun 2022. Online: https://5g-ppp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/white_paper_b5g-6g-kpis-camera-ready.pdf |
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PREDICT-6G supports Open Science
PREDICT-6G is committed to the Open Science practices defined by the European Commission to improve the “quality, efficiency and responsiveness of research”.
Early and open sharing of research
PREDICT-6G has pledged to ensure that data produced during the course of the project is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) and open, as well as being early available.
Research output management and measures to ensure reproducibility of research outputs
PREDICT-6G guarantees the reproducibility of project outputs by covering the reproduction, replication and reuse research processes. Any research output will be made available to the community in Open Access repositories.
Open access to research outputs and participation in open peer-review
Open Access contributes to the circulation of knowledge and their re-usability, which in turn has proved to drive innovation. PREDICT-6G fully embraces this vision. The project relies on all major international publishers that provide several models for Open Access, with two major options on what license to place on the published documents:
- 'Green' Open Access: The publisher's policy allows the authors to archive the final manuscript in an institutional or subject-based repository, before or after peer review. We use the Zenodo Community “PREDICT-6G PROJECT” as our ‘Green’ repository.
- 'Gold' Open Access: Authors can publish in open access journals, or in hybrid journals that both sell subscriptions and offer the option of making individual articles openly accessible. Articles published under this license will also be made available in the project’s Zenodo Community.
Go visit our Zenodo repository!
Other ways to use and contribute to the open science practices
PREDICT-6G will leverage the services provided by the Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe (OpenAIRE), which is an active service provider of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). This European initiative, which lists 37+ million publications and 9+ million research data, has the mission to promote open scholarship and improve the discoverability, accessibility, shareability, reusability, reproducibility and monitoring of data-driven research results, across scientific disciplines.
In addition, PREDICT-6G will rely on complementary open access channels including:
- The release of pre-publication versions through the website.
- The release of paper presentations in conferences through the website.
- The use of social media to provide links to publications and presentation files.
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PREDICT-6G at the SNS Lunchtime Webinar
On the 23th of February, PREDICT-6G was featured at the European Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) Lunchtime webinar series, in which the SNS JU Phase 1 projects provided an overview of their activities and ambitions.
PREDICT-6G’s Coordinator, Prof. Antonio de la Oliva from the University Carlos III of Madrid, was in charge of introducing the project in the ¨Architecture & Secure Services and Security¨ webinar. During his intervention, de la Oliva highlighted PREDICT-6G´s mission, its definition of a deterministic network, and the use cases.
What is a deterministic network? A network that is reliable, time sensitive and predictable. Learn more here.
What is the project mission? PREDIT-6G aims to design, create and validate e2e 6G solutions providing deterministic services over multiple inter-connected domains and technologies (including wired and wireless). Learn more here.
PREDICT-6G use cases: Smart manufacturing, large-scale multi-domain deterministic network and critical communications. Learn more here.
Read the full presentation here!
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The European Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) is a Public-Private Partnership that aims to facilitate and develop industrial leadership in Europe in 5G and 6G networks and services. The SNS JU funds projects that shape a solid research and innovation (R&I) roadmap and deployment agenda by engaging a critical mass of European stakeholders and facilitating international cooperation on various 6G initiatives. In January 2023, SNS JU launched the first phase of its 6G projects, which are critical in establishing a solid research and innovation (R&I) foundation for Europe, defining the next-generation networks.
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