DFKI coordinates project on 6G technology

30. Juni 2021 0 Von Horst Buchwald

Kaiserslautern, June 30, 2021

A consortium of 17 partners will drive the Open6Hub project over the next four years. This involves the development and implementation of intelligent communication networks and the next generation of mobile communications, 6G. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding the project with 68 million euros. It is being coordinated by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).

Explaining the background, coordinator Professor Hans Schotten says: „Germany and Europe must play a key role in shaping the key 6G technology, developing and protecting technological foundations at an early stage in order to become a major player in the global market with innovative and internationally competitive products. The Open6GHub is designing a holistic 6G system that will be resource-efficient and energy-efficient, ensure the protection of personal data and guarantee high network availability. 6G will serve as the infrastructure for future mobile and high-security applications based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.“

The consortium is focusing on application areas with very high demands on the quality and security of communications technology: highly networked production, future mobility scenarios, new learning worlds, personalized medicine and, above all, human interaction with a multitude of autonomous vehicles and devices are examples of a world from 2030 onwards that will be shaped by 6G.

Furthermore, 6G will play a key role in the accelerated digitization for the purpose of sustainability and the implementation of climate policy goals. Equal coverage of rural areas will be a goal of the Open6GHub, for which 6G satellite connections will be investigated, for example.

Technologically, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to increase the efficiency of communication networks and the support of mobile AI-based services is a focus. Resilience of communication networks to internal and external interference (network resilience), protection of private data, and automated support of changing network topologies are other areas of work addressed by the consortium.

The Open6GHub will also make the developed experimental facilities available to third parties as open laboratories.

„6G technology is predestined to support AI applications, which represents a great opportunity to develop a human-centric communication infrastructure, with high standards for security and privacy protection,“ said Professor Andreas Dengel, Executive Director of DFKI in Kaiserslautern and Head of the Smart Data & Knowledge Services research area. „We are therefore extremely pleased to have won this project, as it is an important cornerstone of our research in Kaiserslautern. DFKI and the Technical University of Kaiserslautern (TUK) will jointly receive 22 million euros. This is a great testament to the excellent collaboration between DFKI and TUK,“ Dengel continued.

Professor Antonio Krüger, Chairman of the Board of DFKI: „Placing the project coordination in the hands of our colleague Hans Schotten is a logical decision. He is an internationally recognized expert in the field and has impressively demonstrated his extensive knowledge of mobile communications and its applications in various projects.“

DFKI’s Intelligent Networks research area and Hans Schotten’s chair at TUK look back on extensive experience as coordinators of collaborative projects such as KITOS, TACNET 4.0, FIND, PROWILAN and as a partner of numerous EU collaborative projects on mobile communications (in particular METIS and HEXA-X as EU lighthouse projects for 5G and 6G).

Schotten has driven the use of mobile technology in vertical industries by co-founding the 5G-ACIA and is coordinator of the 5G Model Region Kaiserslautern.

As part of the project, a Living Lab will be set up at DFKI to be operated jointly with TU Kaiserslautern and other partners. In addition, the DFKI Living Lab SmartFactory-KL will be available as a testbed.

The BMBF’s funding measure „6G Research Hubs; Platform for Future Communication Technologies and 6G“ is part of the BMBF’s 6G Initiative as part of the German government’s Future and Economic Stimulus Package. With its research on 6G, Germany is setting itself the goal of assuming a leading role as a technology provider among the world’s leaders and helping to shape technological change at an early stage. This also contributes to the implementation of the German government’s High-Tech Strategy 2025. In addition to the Open6GHub network, three other research hubs are being funded.

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