Enabling Native Localisation and Sensing Support in Future Mobile Networks
Dr Sebastian Robitzsch, member of the Consortium on behalf of InterDigital Europe Ltd, was invited to speak at the industry track on sensors and devices at IEEE World Forum on the Internet of Things (WFIOT).
With the new ETSI Industry Specification Group for Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISG ISAC) officially launched, the talk first motivated the content covered with "sensing" as one of the core IMT research areas for 2030 and beyond. It then dives into 3GPP's work on a feasibility study to natively support sensing use cases and to offer sensing results to verticals, such as IoT applications. The 3GPP use cases considered for standardisation in Rel.19 and beyond were mapped to why sensing relies on deterministic communications and how to achieve that using IEEE (TSN) and/or 3GPP data plane technologies in the advent of 6G.
The work that underpins the presentation is InterDigital's contribution to PREDICT-6G on an IP header-based solution on packet grouping (aka Data Unit Groups) to perform deterministic action in intermediate switches and routers, e.g. 5G User Plane nodes such as UE, gNB and UPF or TSN switches in- and outside a 3GPP domain.
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PREDICT-6G and DESIRE6G co-organise the “6G-PDN Workshop” at MobiHoc 2023
We are pleased to announce that PREDICT-6G and DESIRE6G successfully co-organised the "6G Programmable Deterministic Networking with AI" workshop (6G-PDN)” on the 23 of October 2023, at the prestigious 24th International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing (MobiHoc 2023) held in Washington DC, United States.
The '6G-PDN Workshop' served as a platform for leading researchers, industry experts, and academics to come together and discuss the roadmap and challenges of the technological areas within deterministic communications and deep network programmability in the context of 6G technology to support future end-to- end time-critical applications.
Hosted by the project coordinators of PREDICT-6G and DESIRE6G, Dr. Antonio de la Oliva and Dr. Chrysa Papagianni, respectively, the workshop spanned an entire day. It featured two keynote presentations delivered by Professor John Baras from the University of Maryland and Professor Kaushik Chowdhury from Northeastern University, along with three sessions dedicated to discussing academic papers around the following key topics:
- Deterministic Communications:
Exploring cutting-edge research on deterministic communication technologies that can provide ultra-reliable, low-latency communication links for critical applications such as autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, healthcare systems, and more. This is particularly relevant for PREDICT-6G, which focuses on creating a secure, modular, interoperable, and extensible deterministic network and management framework that automates the definition, provisioning, monitoring, fulfillment, and life-cycle management of end-to-end deterministic services over multiple network domains.
- Deep Network Programmability:
Delving into the advancements in deep network programmability, the ability to program the network fabric both vertically (control and data plane) and horizontally (end to end), that is expected to characterise the new generation of mobile networks, towards supporting extreme performance requirements and service-specific operations. DESIRE6G is in fact introducing deep programmability to the mobile network with the adoption of an end-to-end programmable data plane that supports multi-tenancy, using an abstraction layer to interact with the heterogeneous devices e.g., ASICs, CPUs, GPUS, DPUs etc.
- Transforming networking with AI
Native integration of AI is considered an integral feature of envisioned 6G systems both as a means for designing flexible, less complex, reconfigurable networks, as well as an intrinsic in-network intelligence feature. This is relevant to DESIRE6G that aspires to natively integrate AI in the 6G system architecture to support adaptive decision-making at different time scales with expected impact on energy and performance efficiency gains.
The workshop's key findings include the definition of digital twins, AI and sensing as key areas where deterministic and programmable networks can work together to achieve extreme KPIs.
The standout aspect of the workshop was without any doubt the excellent quality of our keynotes: “Extreme Reconfigurability for 6G: From Programmable Wireless Networks to Programmable Environments” by Professor Kaushik Chowdhury and “Next Generation Hybrid Network (core, 5G/6G, non-terrestrial) Automation: Integrated Model-Based and Data-Driven Systems Engineering” by Professor Baras, which attracted top researchers attending the MobiHoc conference.
The papers that were selected to be part of the workshop are listed below:
- A hierarchical AI-based control plane solution for multi-technology deterministic networks. Authors: P. Giardina, P. Szilágyi, C. Chiasserini, J. Carcel, L. Velasco, S. Spadaro, F. Agraz, S. Robitzsch, R. Rosales, V. Frascolla, R. Doostnejad, A. Calvillo, G. Bernini.
- Using RAW as Control Plane for Wireless Deterministic Networks: Challenges Ahead. Authors: C. Bernardos, A. Mourad, M. Groshev, L. Contreras, M. Roselló, O. Bularca, V. Frascolla, P. Szilagyi, S. Robitzsch.
- Aligning rTWT with 802.1Qbv: a Network Calculus Approach. Authors: C. Barroso-Fernández, J. Martín-Pérez, C. Ayimba, A. de la Oliva.
- Enabling Programmable Deterministic Communications in 6G. Authors: M. Thi, S. Said, A. Roberty, F. Chbib, R. Khatoun, L. Linguaglossa.
- In-Network Quality Control of IP Camera Streams. Authors: C. Györgyi, K. Kecskeméti, P. Vörös, S. Laki, G. Szabó.
- In-Network Security Applications with P4RROT. Authors: K. Kecskeméti, C. Györgyi, P. Vörös, S. Laki.
- Towards extreme network KPIs with programmability in 6G. Authors: G. Pongrácz, A. Mihály, I. Gódor, S. Laki, A. Nanos, C. Papagianni.
- Failure Prediction in Software Defined Flying Ad-hoc Network. Authors: D. Uomo, A. Sgambelluri, P. Castoldi, E. De Paoli, F. Paolucci, F. Cugini.
We extend our gratitude to all participants and to the esteemed keynotes, Professor John Baras and Professor Kaushik Chowdhury, for their invaluable contributions and insights shared during the event. Their expertise and perspectives significantly enriched our discussions, and we anticipate that they will continue to ignite further stimulating conversations in the future.
Stay tuned for future updates and events as we continue to strive towards shaping the future of 6G.
Join PREDICT-6G at the MobiHoc2023
The 24th International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing (MobiHoc 2023) will be held on the 23-26 of October 2023 in Washington DC, USA.
In this scope, DESIRE6G and PREDICT-6G will co-organise the “6G Programmable Deterministic Networking with AI” (6G-PDN) workshop, which will take place on the 23 of October. The aim is to discuss the roadmap and challenges in the technological areas of deterministic communications and deep network programmability in 6G to support future end-to- end time-critical applications, bringing together academic and industry researchers.
The programme features Kaushik Chowdhury, Professor and Vice Chair of Research at Northeastern University College of Engineering, and John Baras, Professor and Lockheed Martin Chair in Systems Engineering at the University of Maryland, as keynote speakers. Following an open call for papers, the selected authors will discuss in-depth various aspects of deterministic networks. These are organised in three sessions:
Session 1
- A hierarchical AI-based control plane solution for multi-technology deterministic networks Authors: P. Giardina, P. Szilágyi, C. Chiasserini, J. Carcel, L. Velasco, S. Spadaro, F. Agraz, S. Robitzsch, R. Rosales, V. Frascolla, R. Doostnejad, A. Calvillo, G. Bernini
- Aligning rTWT with 802.1Qbv: a Network Calculus Approach Authors: C. Barroso-Fernández, J. Martín-Pérez, C. Ayimba, A. de la Oliva
- Enabling Programmable Deterministic Communications in 6G Authors: M. Thi, S. Said, A. Roberty, F. Chbib, R. Khatoun, L. Linguaglossa
- Using RAW as Control Plane for Wireless Deterministic Networks: Challenges Ahead Authors: C. Bernardos, A. Mourad, M. Groshev, L. Contreras, M. Roselló, O. Bularca, V. Frascolla, P. Szilagyi, S. Robitzsch
Session 2
- In-Network Quality Control of IP Camera Streams Authors: C. Györgyi, K. Kecskeméti, P. Vörös, S. Laki, G. Szabó
- In-Network Security Applications with P4RROT Authors: K. Kecskeméti, C. Györgyi, P. Vörös, S. Laki
Session 3
- Towards extreme network KPIs with programmability in 6G Authors: G. Pongrácz, A. Mihály, I. Gódor, S. Laki, A. Nanos, C. Papagianni
- Failure Prediction in Software Defined Flying Ad-hoc Network Authors: D. Uomo, A. Sgambelluri, P. Castoldi, E. De Paoli, F. Paolucci, F. Cugini
Read the workshop programme here.
Register and join us!
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PREDICT-6G attends the first SNS JU Steering Board meeting
On the 5 of September 2023, the first SNS JU Steering Board (SB) meeting took place in Athens, Greece, hosted by Space Hellas. Antonio de la Oliva, coordinator of PREDICT-6G, joined the meeting alongside the other SNS project´s coordinators comprising the SB.
During this initial encounter, the SB set the foundations for its work, discussing its responsibilities as well as different suggestions to successfully fulfil its duties and respond to the needs of the community. The SB is instrumental to coordinate the research efforts and set the guidelines for advancing the SNS objectives.
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PREDICT-6G at ICTON 2023
The International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON) 2023, took place from 2 to 6 July at the Central Library of University Politehnica Bucharest, Romania. The theme of this year’s Conference was focused on the applications of transparent and all-optical technologies in telecommunications, computing and novel applications.
Conference topics included, among others, digital all-optical networks, next generation networking, network reliability and availability, wireless and optical networking, and 5G to 6G communications. All subjects discussed during the Conference are of great interest for the development of PREDICT-6G, which participated in ICTON 2023 with three sessions that have subsequently resulted in the publication of conference papers.
On July 3, Dr. Luis Velasco and Marc Ruiz, members of the PREDICT-6G consortium on behalf of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), chaired the “8th Workshop on Beyond-5G Network Operation (B5GNeO)”. During the workshop, Jaume Comellas and Davide Careglio, also members of the UPC, presented two papers.
Jaume Comellas presented the paper “PILOT: A methodology for modeling the performance of packet connections”. This paper presents the PILOT methodology for modeling the performance of packet connections during commissioning testing in terms of throughput, delay and jitter. PILOT runs in a sandbox domain and constructs a scenario where an efficient traffic flow simulation environment, based on the CURSA-SQ model, is used to generate large amounts of data for Machine Learning model training and validation. The simulation scenario is tuned using real measurements of the connection obtained from a set of active probes. You can read the full paper here.
Davide Careglio presented the paper “Disaggregated delay modeling in multidomain networks”. In this paper, the team proposes a collaborative environment, where each domain models intra-domain delay components of inter-domain paths and shares those models with a broker system providing the E2E connectivity services. The broker, in turn, models the delay of inter-domain links based on E2E monitoring and the received intra-domain models. You can read the full paper here.
The following day, July 4, also as part of the B5GNeO workshop invited presentations, Marc Ruiz from the UPC presented the paper “CURSA-SQ models for time-sensitive networking”. This paper focuses on analysing the impact of conveying time-sensitive traffic in operators’ networks when such traffic is mixed with best-effort traffic. In particular, extensions to a continuous G/G/1/k queue model are proposed to evaluate two different Ethernet technologies, synchronous and asynchronous, supporting time-sensitive flows in terms of their influence on the performance of best-effort traffic. You can read the full paper here.
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ICTON is organised by The National Institute of Telecommunications, former Department of Transmission and Optical Technologies in Warsaw, together with the University Politehnica Bucharest and the IEEE Photonics Society Poland Chapter.
PREDICT-6G at the IEEE 802 Plenary Tutorial
On the 10th of July 2023, Carlos J. Bernardos (UC3M) and János Farkas (ERICSSON) will participate in the IEEE 802 Plenary Tutorial in Berlin, Germany, with a session about IETF Reliable Available Wireless (RAW).
The tutorial provides an overview on RAW. It particularly outlines the use cases and technologies considered by RAW and the RAW framework architecture, including Operation, Administration and Management (OAM) mechanisms.
You can follow the event online here.
The work of Carlos J. Bernardos in this tutorial has been partially supported by the Horizon Europe PREDICT-6G (Grant 101095890) project.
We very much welcome your participation!
The IETF Deterministic (DetNet) Working Group aims to standardise technologies to provide deterministic Layer 3 communications for various use cases, including professional audio and video, electrical utilities or wireless, whereas the RAW Working Group was established to extend the DetNet architecture and solutions to wireless networks.
PREDICT-6G at MedComNet 2023
The 21st Mediterranean Communication and Computer Networking Conference took place from the 13-15 of June 2023 in Ponza, Italy. Initiated in 2002, MedComNet is a forum for the presentation of new research results in the broad area of wired and wireless communication and computer networking.
On the 14th of June, PREDICT-6G was represented in the session “Edge, fog and cloud computing”. Professor Carla Fabiana Chiasserini and her colleagues from Politecnico di Torino (POLITO, Italy) presented their paper ¨TCP Connection Management for Stateful Container Migration at the Network Edge”, which addresses service continuity while migrating microservices. You can read the paper here.
Prof. Chiasserini also chaired the special session “Networking for a better Quality of Life”, with several presentations about the utilization of networking to enhance the wellbeing of citizens in terms of safety, privacy and health.
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MedComNet has obtained the technical co-sponsorship of the IEEE Communications Society (IEEE ComSoc), and accepted papers will be submitted for inclusion into IEEE Xplore.
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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