CONCEPT
Beyond 5G
• The rapid integration of digital technology across industries like transportation and manufacturing has boosted the need for efficient communication and computing services.
• Networks are becoming increasingly complex and distributed, requiring a large variety of technologies to operate. With 6G, which is now on the horizon for around 2030, it is essential to design, experiment and standardize new network architectures with more intelligence and automation.
• European 6G roadmaps prioritize an AI-native management system for complex networks. These networks need to be sustainable, energy-efficient, and adaptable to various services and business models. Establishing a consistent unified communication and computing architecture requires unconventional methods, along with collaboration among standardization groups and industry leaders for practical market integration.
Specific objectives
6G-TWIN overall concept depicted below will be implemented through 3 areas of Research and Innovation activities.
Area 1: Advance the state of the art
• 6G-TWIN will design and develop an open, federated and AI-native network architecture for future 6G systems that integrates NDT to enable intelligent data analytics and decision-making in real-time.
• 6G-TWIN will design a federated, graph-based NDT that accurately represents highly dynamic and complex network scenarios and serves as a sandbox for optimising network planning, management and control applications.
• 6G-TWIN will implement an accurate, reliable, open and secured modelling and simulation framework to represent a networked environment and test the functionalities of the proposed 6G architecture.
Area 2: Demonstration
• 6G-TWIN will test, validate and facilitate the transferability of the solutions through the development of two demonstrators supporting highly dynamic use cases, with two key focus areas: teledriving and energy efficiency.
Area 3: Adoption
• 6G-TWIN will support the standardisation of its operation system to ensure the interoperability, platform openness and operation harmonisation of its future solutions.
• 6G-TWIN will provide industry with insights on innovative business models based on 6G-TWIN solutions and visions.
Expected results
• Integration of the 6G-TWIN Technology Components in one federated and AI-native network reference architecture that integrates multiple NDTs for real-time data analytics and decision-making across at least two network domain.
• New on-the-fly AI approaches to orchestrating network functions and services.
• At least 3 AI-based NF/NS for data analytics or/and decision-making to optimise network performance.
• Accurate, reliable, open and secured modelling and simulation framework for representing a networked environment and testing the functionalities of the 6G architecture.
• Monitored KPIs & KVIs for each demonstrator, including at least 30% end-to-end improvement in energy efficiency.
