Platforms
The synthesis of the 6G-SANDBOX physical infrastructure layer includes:
- components from mature experimentation testbeds around Europe
- components from commercial public networks (mainly offered by TEL network in Malaga)
- emulation/twinning components (mainly offered by Keysight toolbox)
- any additional components that will be provided by externals or open callers.
To facilitate the experimentation process, the components shall include probes for enabling monitoring. The entire service provisioning chain is covered, in a sense that end-to-end 6G-enabled connectivity is provided by the 6GSANDBOX physical infrastructure layer. Thus, physical nodes or digital twins of components that belong to the network core, transport, edge, and access domains, are provided.
All the components of the 6G-SANDBOX physical infrastructure layer are distributed in four 6G-SANDBOX sites around Europe, namely the Malaga, Athens, Berlin, and Oulu sites. By definition, the infrastructure layer is expansible, meaning that other hardware components can be added either through the open call procedure or through other synergies (e.g., with Stream B or Stream D projects).
Beyond the use-case agnostic experimentation capabilities that the 6G-SANDBOX facility will provide, expansions with enablers that will support 6G use cases will be integrated. The consortium has decided three main expansions with enablers towards Extended Reality (XR), Haptic communications, IoT-originated Video streams.
Enabling extended Reality (XR)
6G-SANDBOX will provide an API to third parties (companies from the open calls) to let them execute their own algorithms using the above-mentioned offloading scheme. Also, the experimentation methodology will be expanded with KPIs that can quantify the effectiveness of the implementation (e.g., number of complete inferences per second that an end device can achieve using the implemented service). The target values will be tailored to real time execution of an XR application, so between 15 and 25 inferences per second at least.
Enabling Haptic Communications
6G-SANDBOX facility will be expanded at the end user side with related modems and devices based on OWO main, Oculus and OWO vest. The technology of those devices will open the world of entertainment to a new sense, physically connecting people around the world to create a virtual distributed environment, and opening up new possibilities for entertainment and leisure interaction. This is also applicable to business and social environments.
Enabling IoT video streams
6G-SANDBOX facility will be expanded with the ICTF platform, that supports static gateways (e.g., in-buildings, on light poles) and moving ones (e.g., on board vehicles). The gateways, owned by different entities, consist on micro-computers with relatively low to medium processing power (e.g., Raspberry PI, Jetson Xavier). The IoT gateways are equipped with different types of devices such as legacy and 360° cameras, various types of sensors, and GPS devices. These devices produce streams of data that can be processed locally or at the edge, and composed to construct the digital twin of the target location. The platform offers basic remote control over the gateways using cellular systems.
6G-SANDBOX
Supporting Architectural and technological Network evolutions through an intelligent, secureD and twinning enaBled Open eXperimentation facility
Call: HORIZON-JU-SNS-2022
Topic: HORIZON-JU-SNS-2022-STREAM-C-01-01
Type of action: HORIZON-JU-RIA
Duration: 36 months
TAGS
Grant Agreement
6G-SANDBOX has received funding from the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 101096328