Europe is looking at next-generation communications technology that will enable faster communications, better support education and remote surgery, and lead to “digital twins” and holographic virtual meetings.
The Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) is coordinating the European Union (EU)-funded 6G research network “MiFuture”, which brings together major telecommunications companies such as Ericsson, Nokia and Vodafone, as well as some of the leading universities in mobile communications research.
The aim is to initiate progress in the area of multi-antenna technology used in 6G communications.
The project will start with 15 contracts and a training programme to help candidates complete their doctoral studies and develop them into highly qualified researchers in the field with innovative skills.
“We want to address what we believe to be the most important mobile communications challenge for society over the next decade,” said project coordinator Ana Garcia Almada.
The goal is communications that offer very low latency, high data rates and reduced energy costs, said Almada, a professor in UC3M’s Department of Signal Theory and Communications.
Latency is the delay caused by the delay between sending and receiving a packet of information.
Armada says addressing these challenges will require working with a set of innovative architectures and technologies that enable interoperability between equipment from different manufacturers, or embedding native AI throughout the network design.
“MiFuture paves the way for the implementation of heterogeneous cell-free networks with massive numbers of antennas to meet the performance, energy efficiency, positioning accuracy and complexity requirements of the evolution of mobile communications towards 6G.”
The project’s research team plans to tackle several practical scenarios to test what can be achieved with these advances, including full interaction between real and virtual worlds, creating augmented and virtual reality video calls and holographic images of people in the presence, and even performing remote surgery.
“It’s possible that a specialist in Madrid could operate on someone in a remote village in the province of Avila, more than 100 kilometres away,” Almada said.
6G: What is a digital twin?
Are you interested in developments in the energy industry and the technology and science that underpins it? Then our email newsletter, “Energise,” is for you. Click here to subscribe.
