SNS JU reveals raft of European 6G projects

The European Union-backed Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) has selected Nokia to be the coordinator of the Sustain-6G lighthouse project.

The SNS-JU is a public-private partnership funded by the European Commission that aims to facilitate and develop industrial leadership in Europe in 5G and 6G networks and services. It funds projects that shape a solid research and innovation (R&I) roadmap and deployment agenda by engaging a critical mass of European stakeholders and facilitating international cooperation on various 6G initiatives.

The SNS JU has two main missions: fostering Europe’s technology sovereignty in 6G by implementing the related R&I programme leading to the conception and standardisation around 2025; and boosting 5G deployment in Europe in view of developing digital lead markets and enabling the digital and green transition of the economy and society.

SNS JU has now announced the winners of its third call for proposals, with 16 projects selected to receive funding for advancing next-generation communications networks and services. These projects aim to offer what are claimed to be breakthrough innovations, develop experimental platforms and conduct large-scale trials, driving “world-class” research and shaping the world’s digitally connected future.

Proposals came from 1,874 applicants across 33 European countries requesting grants totalling €863m, demonstrating, said SNS JU, the depth of beyond 5G/6G expertise across the region. The 16 selected projects in this third call will support 301 beneficiaries from 25 countries in developing and deploying next-generation network infrastructure, platforms and services.

Sustain-6G will develop a holistic sustainability framework that addresses environmental, societal and economic aspects of 6G for key vertical sectors. It will be applied considering the full lifecycle of assets, and one of the main goals will be to develop new solutions for meeting sustainability challenges using the toolkit 6G will offer.

As part of the project, Nokia will lead a consortium of innovators that will aim to identify how 6G can play a key role in building a sustainable future, addressing not only environmentally sustainable, but also economically and societally sustainable technologies. The consortium includes network equipment and services suppliers, communications services providers, industrial equipment manufacturers, European research institutions and universities, and many small-and medium-sized enterprises. Sustain-6G will kick off in January 2025, and is scheduled to complete its work in 2027.

The consortium will devote considerable time to working out use cases for three targeted areas, drawn from the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, namely energy smart grid; e-health and telemedicine; and agriculture.

In the first category, the consortium will explore how 6G could be used to create microgrids that manage electricity demand. Sustain-6G will also investigate the use of artificial intelligence technologies for real-time control of distribution networks. This could lead to more efficient and resilient grids that minimise disruptions while providing the flexibility to draw energy from diverse sources as the world transitions to renewables such as solar and wind.

The consortium will also generate new ideas on how 6G can make digital health more inclusive. It said 6G infrastructure could not only provide a far-reaching infrastructure for securely transmitting and analysing medical data, but also a foundation for new home-based online assessment services. These networks could improve the diagnosis and treatment process in underserved communities.

Finally, the consortium will investigate how 6G connectivity could be allocated on a temporary basis to enable smart agricultural applications that require high bandwidth, sensing, telemetry, data analytics and automation. For instance, 6G’s edge cloud capabilities could be harnessed to handle high-priority farming equipment automation tasks during harvests or provide advanced processing capabilities that integrate data from field sensors, climate stations, soil analysis and satellite imagery to provide contextualised information during the growing season.

As a lighthouse project, Sustain-6G will be one of the SNS JU’s key initiatives, and it’s the third major European 6G research consortium that Nokia has been selected to lead. The others are Hexa-X and Hexa-X-II, which laid the groundwork for 6G pre-standardisation and use cases respectively.

Commenting on the project and what the tech firm hopes to achieve, Peter Merz, vice-president of Nokia Standards, said: “The UN Paris Agreement committed the world to combatting climate change. Every industry must do its part. Sustain-6G will show how the communications industry will apply the next generation of networking to creating that sustainable future, overcoming not just environmental challenges, but societal and economic challenges as well.”