Did you know that the United Nations estimated that 68% of the world population is projected to live in urban areas by 2050? Although we are not yet in 2050, the increase in population density is already a reality.
6G-REFERENCE envisions a future where urban areas are equipped with sustainable solutions that can cope with the ever-increasing traffic demands and population densification, while providing disruptive capabilities like the materialization of the internet of sense.
This EU-funded project was launched in January 2024 by a consortium 10 research and industrial partners from 8 European countries, coordinated by Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC). During the three next upcoming years, until December 2026, these European innovators will develop integrated circuit and antenna component solutions, including dynamic frequency filtering and modulated radiation, to enable efficient spectrum coexistence schemes, and deploy practical hardware enablers in terms of low complexity, cost and power consumption that could end up constituting a reference design for future 6G-distributed radios.
The first time they met was virtually in January 2024, to pre-kick off 6G-REFERENCE, but last April, they had the opportunity to gather in person at the CTTC’s facilities in the Spanish city of Castelldefels, near Barcelona, to discuss the project research objectives.
The 6G-REFERENCE Partners Host the Project Virtual Pre-kick Off Meeting to Present their Work Packages
The 6G-REFERENCE Partners Meet at the First General Assembly and Face-to-face Kick-off Meeting to Discuss the Project Research Objectives
Born six months ago, 6G-REFERENCE was launched to offer a sustainable solution based on 6G hardware enablers for cell free coherent communications and sensing in urban areas.
The project targets low complexity and low power, in other words, practical integrated circuits and antenna systems for 6G applications. It aims at enabling new functionalities addressing D-MIMO communication scenarios but extended to support distributed sensing and accurate localization and positioning.
The 6G-REFERENCE Project Kicks-off to Offer a Sustainable Solution Based on 6G Hardware Enablers For Cell Free Coherent Communications and Sensing in Urban Areas
Meeting the SNS JU and the 6G Ecosystem
Our 6G-REFERENCE partners have not only met each other, but they have also gotten to know the 6G ecosystem in several events. The first of them was the Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2024 (26-29 February), where we shared the CTTC stand 220 – booth 37 with 5G-STARDUST, VERGE Project and 6G-NTN. We networked with the MWC 2024 attendees and explained to them why and how we target practical integrated circuits and antenna systems for 6G applications.
In March 2024, our coordinator Ignacio Llamas, Senior Researcher at CTTC, presented for the first time our project at the SNS JU & 6G-IA Webinar to Showcase the Call 2 Projects.
He explained that the 6G-REFERENCE project will develop 6G hardware enablers for joint communications and sensing, including:
- In-Band MIMO full duplex transceiver innovations.
- Novel synchronization solutions.
- Novel radio frequency and antenna components.
- Dynamic filtering (at IF and integrated filtering at the antenna estate).
6G-REFERENCE will focus on the centimeter frequency range, since it is seen as an important frequency range where new frequency spectrum can be made available for 6G use cases that require outdoor and indoor mobility.” – Ignacio Llamas, 6G-REFERENCE coordinator from CTTC.
At the beginning of this month, we attended our third and last event during this first half a year of 6G-REFERENCE: the EuCNC & 6G Summit 2024 (3-6 June) in Antwerp, Belgium, to present the project goals.
During the 4-day event, our coordinator Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya, represented by Ignacio Llamas and Zabdiel Brito, and our partner University of Twente, represented by Eric Klumperink, spoke about the 6G-REFERENCE project objectives, activities and goals at the booth number 68, and in a project presentation.
The SNS Journal 2024
6G-REFERENCE belongs to the Call 2 Projects Stream B5 ‘Microelectronics-based Solutions for 6G Networks’ of the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU).
Call 2 B5 projects will contribute to the strong push towards the advancement of European microelectronics in providing solutions for next-generation communication networks and devices at various levels of the device data processing chain, from baseband and mixed-signal processing to radio frequency and antenna systems covering frequencies from sub-6 GHz to THz.
The SNS JU recently published their SNS Journal 2024, including data and facts about 6G-REFERENCE in the pages 148 and 149: overview, use cases/scenarios, concept/architecture and expected results.
Stay tuned to discover how we will improve coherent wireless communication and sensing beyond what is currently possible with 5G in urban scenarios!
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This newsletter was originally published on LinkedIn.
