Ericsson noted that one of the main aspects of the 6G project is the concept of deterministic communication
Ericsson has joined forces with Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology and eight other partners to solve what it says is one of the key challenges of future 6G networks: Predictable end-to-end connections between users, processes and “digital representations in cyber world”.
The project, dubbed DETERMINISTIC6G, is a 5.7 million euros ($6.1 million) research and innovation consortium coordinated by Ericsson and KTH, with the main goal of ensuring that next-generation wireless networks can accommodate new applications within industrial automation, manufacturing, transport, medicine and entertainment. The Swedish vendor noted that one of the main aspects of the project is the concept of deterministic communication, or guaranteeing communication latency and reliability, and that the new project will focus on developing the technology enablers for time-sensitive communications that as-yet-unstandardized 6G systems are expected to need.
The consortium consists of ten partners including Ericsson, Orange, B&R, IUVO, and SSSA, KTH, University of Stuttgart, Silicon Austria Labs, Cumucore and Montimage.
Magnus Frodigh, VP and head of research at Ericsson Research, said: “I have high expectations on DETERMINISTIC6G, a 6G technology enabler project focused on deterministic communication. With a unique consortium combining expertise from both the wired and wireless domains, DETERMINISTIC6G has the potential to shape the foundations of 6G systems with respect to time-critical applications.”
“This project can shape the technological foundations of future 6G systems,” said James Gross, a professor with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science School at KTH and the project’s technical manager.
A central focus of the project will be on the interplay between future 6G networks with highly time-synchronized networks, or as current implementations are called, Time Sensitive Networking (TSN). “The challenge in these settings is that wireless systems like 6G can be subject to strong random variations, which is incompatible with technologies like TSN,” Ericsson explained in a release. DETERMINISTIC6G, it said, “will tackle this problem by a combination of new wireless transmission design and advanced machine learning algorithms, leading to 6G wireless transmission with deterministic latency behavior.” The project will also explore novel approaches to time synchronization as well as consequences and network security, and the “integration of computational nodes into 6G systems.”
In October 2022, Ericsson expanded its 6G collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin, where it’s conducting research into using 6G to power extended reality (XR). Ericsson had joined UT’s 6G@UT research center as a Level-1 member earlier in 2022. The vendor it is now upgrading its contribution to Level-IV membership, including a new three-year collaboration focusing on XR streaming, sensing and communication designs. The research aims to develop solutions that can be harnessed to scale up XR use cases in the 6G generation. The cross-discipline research team includes leading experts in applications (media encoding and streaming), sensing and communication.
Ericsson had also announced it was continuing to work on the European Commission’s (EC) 6G research project, Hexa-X-II. While Nokia is the project leader for Hexa-X-II, Ericsson is the project’s technical manager. Orange, Telecom Italia, TU Dresden, University of Oulu, IMEC and Atos are coordinating work packages on the project, which aims to start work in January, with a planned duration of 2.5 years.
