Nokia will work with a consortium that includes partners from industry, subject matter experts, start-ups, research institutes and universities
Nokia announced that it will lead the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research’s KOMSENS-6G project.
In a release, the Finnish vendor said that the project aims to drive global pre-standardization activities from a German and European perspective, with a specific focus on the network as a sensor technology.
Under the terms of the initiative, Nokia will work with a consortium that includes partners from industry, subject matter experts, start-ups, research institutes and universities in Germany. KOMSENS-6G is part of a broader German 6G initiative and has a total funding of 14.9 million euros ($15.5 million), with a duration of three years.
Nokia highlighted that sensing will be a key enabling technology towards the vision of bringing together the digital and physical worlds in a future 6G era. The sensing service will be fully integrated in the wireless network for simultaneous operation with communication services. In this 6G initiative, Nokia said it will research technology solutions for front-end, baseband, RAN protocols, data processing and security to make the 6G vision a reality.
On completion of the 3-year project, KOMSENS-6G aims to deliver an architecture for integrated sensing and communication, together with a demonstration of the combined service.
Peter Vetter, president of Nokia Bell Labs Core Research, said: “As wireless communication networks are ubiquitous, a “mirror” or digital twin of the physical world can be created using network sensing. By interacting with a digital twin, we could extend our senses to every point the network touches. We believe the sensing network will be a key component of 6G systems of the future, which we want to enable in a secure and privacy preserving way. We are looking forward to working with all consortium members within KOMSENS-6G to deliver the essential solutions to make this happen.”
In July, Nokia announced it will lead 6G-ANNA, a German national-funded 6G lighthouse project.
As part of the initiative, Nokia will work closely with the consortium, which includes partners from industry, startups, research institutes and universities in Germany.
Within 6G-ANNA, Nokia will focus on designing an end-to-end 6G architecture and work with other project partners on three key technology areas: 6G access, network of networks, and automation and simplification. Selected topics such as sub-networks, XR and real-time digital twinning will be implemented and presented as proof of concepts.
In addition, the vendor will interact with the German ecosystem, including four academic “6G Hubs” with more than 60 university chairs. Beyond Germany, 6G-ANNA aims to interact with other major 6G flagship projects in Europe and the U.S. to shape global 6G standards.
Nokia also recently announced that it will lead the Hexa-X-II project, the second phase of the European 6G flagship initiative.
Nokia noted that this new phase will expand the Hexa-X partner list to 44 organizations that are tasked with creating the pre-standardized platform and system view that will form the basis for many inputs into future 6G standardization.
The Hexa-X-II initiative has been awarded funding from the European Commission. The goal of both Hexa-X and Hexa-X-II is to establish Europe as leader in future 6G systems.
