DEDICAT 6G

Website: www.dedicat6g.eu                         Social media:               Contact: DEDICAT6G-Contact@5g-ppp.eu

Abstract:

In future 6G wireless networks, it is imperative to support more dynamic resourcing and connectivity to improve adaptability, performance, and trustworthiness in the presence of emerging human-centric services with heterogeneous computation needs. DEDICAT6 aims to develop a smart connectivity platform using artificial intelligence and blockchain techniques that will enable 6G networks to combine the existing communication infrastructure with novel distribution of intelligence (data, computation, and storage) at the edge to allow not only flexible, but also energy efficient realisation of the envisaged real-time experience. DEDICAT 6G takes the next vital step beyond 5G by addressing techniques for achieving and maintaining an efficient dynamic connectivity and intelligent placement of computation in the mobile network. In addition, the project targets the design and development of mechanisms for dynamic coverage extension through the exploitation of novel terminals and mobile client nodes, e.g., smart connected cars, robots, and drones. DEDICAT also addresses security, privacy, and trust assurance especially for mobile edge services and enablers for novel interaction between humans and digital systems. The aim is to achieve (i) more efficient use of resources; (ii) reduction of latency, response time, and energy consumption; (iii) reduction of operational and capital expenditures; and (iv) reinforcement of security, privacy, and trust. DEDICAT 6G will focus on four use cases: Smart warehousing, Enhance experiences, Public Safety and Smart Highway. The use cases will pilot the developed solutions via simulations and demonstrations in laboratory environments, and larger field evaluations exploiting various assets and testing facilities. The results are expected to show significant improvements in terms of intelligent network load balancing and resource allocation, extended connectivity, enhanced security, privacy and trust and human-machine interactions.

Main Objectives:

The vision of DEDICAT 6G is to transform Beyond 5G networks into a smart connectivity platform that is highly adaptive, ultra-fast, and dependable/resilient for supporting securely innovative, human-centric applications. This overall objective can be further divided in the following objectives:

• Provision of imperceptible end-to-end latency and response time, with a minimal energy and (communication, computation, storage) resource consumption in B5G networks for the support of innovative applications. This objective will provide solutions for dynamic distributed edge intelligence for improving the task execution time and energy efficiency of host edge devices and ultimately reducing the end-to-end latency for human-centric applications.
• Dynamic, efficient expansion of the communication environment to enable access to all people, information, and goods anywhere, anytime in an ultra-real time experience. This objective will enable the dynamic, opportunistic set up of dynamic coverage and connectivity extensions exploiting robots, drones, connected cars, etc. for covering areas that cannot be easily reached, where infrastructure, or additional capacity is required only for a finite, short amount of time, or where regular network infrastructure has been damaged e.g., due to terrorist actions or natural disasters. These will be combined with the mechanisms for dynamic, distributed intelligence, caching and storage and will consider a wide range of factors such as the location and trajectory of devices that can play the role of temporary mobile access points (MAPs), communication capabilities, locations of docking and charging stations of the candidate mobile access points.
• Reinforcement of security, privacy, and trust in B5G systems in support of advanced IoT applications. This objective will provide mechanisms for realizing trusted information exchange between parties, devices and sub-systems and will also provide intelligent system components for reasoning on identification of patterns indicating security, privacy, and trust issues to enable their timely prevention. Threat detection mechanisms will be based on federated learning consequently boosting privacy protection by moving ML model training process to the source of data instead of transferring data to a centralized entity.
• Development of human-centric applications in the scope of the project use cases and showcase novel interaction between humans and digital systems. This objective will showcase the use of innovative interfaces and devices for human-centric applications.
• Demonstration and validation of the developed solutions using a series of Proof of Concept (PoC) pilots in the scope of an agile development framework. Implementation of specific PoCs referring to different use cases, and definition of measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics for performance monitoring. Deployment, testing, and validation of the developed DEDICAT 6G technologies will be performed through system level simulations, lab-based testing of implemented functionality as well as application in experiments in realistic environments. The aim is to set up and test the developed system and services in actual settings, coping with existing issues, addressing potentially various stakeholders’ requirements. The developed system will be fine-tuned with the feedback obtained during these experiments.
• Establishment of a collaborative framework for relevant end-users/stakeholders, industry, and academia. The aim is to employ methods for engaging end-users/stakeholders in the design and development phases, by defining organizational and technical measures for optimising the interactions between end-users’ and researchers and tailoring technologies to user/stakeholder needs and requirements
• Contributions to standardization activities. Maximise the penetration of the project solutions and technologies in key stakeholder standardization bodies such as 3GPP, IETF, ETSI MEC and ETSI ENI.

List of Participants