Getting started with 6G – Emerging 6G Toolkits and Testbeds for enabling 6G research and development for all 
by Thomas Magedanz, TU Berlin 

Fraunhofer FOKUS

Abstract

This keynote will provide an update of the ICCE 2024 tutorial and is focusing on how to establish 6G-ready testbeds for enabling early and reasonable hands on 6G research and development. As the sixth generation of mobile communications (6G) is targeted for global deployment in 2030 and global 6G research is in full swing in order to develop the needed experts and technologies around the globe. After three years of international 6G research it becomes clearer what 6G might be. This talk will focus on the 6G architecture and the software side as it seems very likely, that 6G will become a perfectionated 5G, thus it will be a rather evolutionary than revolutionary architecture. The reason behind is that in regard to massive 5G rollouts it will be very unlikely to replace these new global deployments by another new infrastructure, particularly as sustainability is one of the most important key 6G drivers. Thus looking at the progressing virtualization and disaggregation of 5G networks, also driven by OpenRAN principles and related open source 5G RAN and CORE initiatives, we are heading towards real multivendor, open network infrastructures.

In addition, we see the number of private 5G networks globally rising and thus we assume that 6G might become a vivid mix of highly dynamic federated and interconnected public and very private 5G and 6G networks. This 6G network environment will have to fulfill what 5G promised, the enablement of many different vertical application domains and enablement of different business models. Thus each of these - maybe federated – networks has to be highly customized and integrated into the application context to do “the job”. This means the overall technology complexity is dramatically increasing and the networking research community has to integrate with the various vertical application communities. Following the “seeing is believing” or “demo or die” principles, we believe we need sooner than later reasonable 6G-ready testbeds, which realistically might start their life´s as 5G evolution labs. 

These advancements place substantial demands on research and development infrastructure globally, particularly for various 6G research initiatives. International collaboration is becoming increasingly crucial for the early harmonization of ideas, concepts, architectures, and related protocols and interfaces. This collaboration is essential for the efficient standardization of mobile networks for 5G Advanced and 6G. Moreover, the emphasis on open, vendor-neutral technology and application testbeds, along with supporting software toolkits, is key to education and skill development. This focus is evident in different regional research centers, which aim to foster local ecosystem development. There is also a growing interest in small-scale, portable testbeds that allow students to engage with the latest networking technologies in their own environments. This approach is particularly important for developing countries to align with the 6G vision of creating a 6G network for everyone and to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

This keynote outlines the current international state of play in building up these 6G-ready testbeds and the related new “OPEN research infrastructures and toolkits for 6G (OpenRIT 6G)” initiative trying to create an exchange of ideas, concepts, experiences, and related toolkits to build a foundation for a 6G for all! The talk will also outline the development roadmap for the Fraunhofer FOKUS Open5GCore toolkit (www.open5GCore.org) for enabling upcoming 6G-ready testbeds but also introduces the new FOKUS Organic 6G Core. In addition we will introduce the TU Berlin driven open source initiative Open6Gnet.org (www.open6Gnet.org). All these toolkits are forming an important foundation in current German and European 6G flagship projects, such as the BMBF Open6GHub (https://www.open6ghub.de/en/) and European 6G-Sandbox (https://6g-sandbox.eu/).

For more follow Prof. Magedanz on LinkedIn.

Ultrasound-mediated Neuromodulation 
by Hyunjoo Jenny Lee, Ph.D.,  

KAIST Endowed Chair Professor

Associate Professor, School of Electrical Engineering

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea

Abstract

In the current aging society, the number of patients suffering from degenerative brain diseases is continuously increasing. However, many of these brain disorders are intractable and difficult to treat. Non-invasive brain stimulation is an attractive alternative method to a pharmaceutical approach that attempts to treat brain disorders through physical stimulation. Among the various direct brain stimulation techniques, such as electrical, magnetic, and optical, ultrasound has been proposed as a new modality for neuromodulation due to its distinct advantages such as high spatial resolution and in-depth targeting. As ultrasound modality is still in the early stages of development, further investigations on various aspects such as neuromodulation mechanism, therapeutic effects, and safety are still required. Although ultrasound technology is a mature biomedical tool developed from ultrasound imaging, many new technological advancements such as miniaturized devices based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology have been recently introduced for the specific purpose of neuromodulation. In this talk, I will introduce these new neurotools which are essential to uncovering the fundamental mechanisms of ultrasound brain stimulation and ultimately to developing an effective therapeutic means for brain disorders

Paradigm Shifts in the Design of Human Activity Recognition Systems Using Radar Sensors

by Matthias Pätzold, Ph.D.,  

Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil., Mobile Communications Group

University of Agder, Norway

Abstract

Low-cost solutions for high-frequency components and novel packaging solutions combined with advanced production processes have led to the development of affordable radar sensors. Today, modern radar sensors are ubiquitous and can be found in many situations in everyday life, where one would not have expected them just a few years ago. Low-cost radar sensor solutions have not only led to major advances in autonomous driving and Industry 4.0, but have also opened up numerous new applications in the field of human activity recognition. Application areas of human activity recognition include remote health assessment, smart home, smart surveillance, human-computer interaction, sports, autopilots, and social robotics, to name a few.

This presentation deals with human activity recognition using radar sensing techniques. The talk spans an arc from wave propagation in the presence of human activities to modern time-frequency signal analysis and processing techniques up to machine and deep learning methods. The presentation will focus on two paradigm shifts that allow an efficient design of human activity recognition systems. The first paradigm shift leads to new classes of channel models whose input signals are time-variant trajectories of human body segments. Several methods will be discussed how trajectories of human body segments can be measured, modelled, and simulated. The second proposed paradigm shift enables a shift from the traditional experimental-based design methodology to a simulation-based design concept for the design of human activity recognition systems. Solutions are discussed that enable almost 100 percent correct recognition of human activity, regardless of the user's direction of movement. The new simulation-based design concept will be illustrated by animations for several scenarios, including a pendulum experiment providing ground truth data, activities of daily living (falling, walking, sitting down, standing up), gait analysis, and diverse sport activities for elderlies.