6G Vision, Value, Use Cases and Technologies from European 6G Flagship Project Hexa-X

While 5G is being deployed and the economy and society begin to reap the associated benefits, the research and development community starts to focus on the next, 6th Generation (6G) of wireless communications. Although there are papers available in the literature on visions, requirements and technical enablers for 6G from various academic perspectives, there is a lack of joint industry and academic work towards 6G. In this paper a consolidated view on vision, values, use cases and key enabling technologies from leading industry stakeholders and academia is presented. The authors represent the mobile communications ecosystem with competences spanning hardware, link layer and networking aspects, as well as standardization and regulation. The second contribution of the paper is revisiting and analyzing the key concurrent initiatives on 6G. A third contribution of the paper is the identification and justification of six key 6G research challenges: (i) “connecting”, in the sense of empowering, exploiting and governing, intelligence; (ii) realizing a network of networks, i.e., leveraging on existing networks and investments, while reinventing roles and protocols where needed; (iii) delivering extreme experiences, when/where needed; (iv) (environmental, economic, social) sustainability to address the major challenges of current societies; (v) trustworthiness as an ingrained fundamental design principle; (vi) supporting cost-effective global service coverage. A fourth contribution is a comprehensive specification of a concrete first-set of industry and academia jointly defined use cases for 6G, e.g., massive twinning, cooperative robots, immersive telepresence, and others. Finally, the anticipated evolutions in the radio, network and management/orchestration domains are discussed

Service Prototyping Lab Report - 2017 (Y2)

The annual activity report of the Service Prototyping Lab at Zurich University of Applied Sciences. Research trends and initiatives, research projects, transfer to education and local industry, academic community involvement, qualification and scientific development over the period of one year are among the covered topics

The 5D Approach to Control and Manage Smart Spaces

Peer reviewe

Efficient Fast-Convolution-Based Waveform Processing for 5G Physical Layer

This paper investigates the application of fast-convolution (FC) filtering schemes for flexible and effective waveform generation and processing in the fifth generation (5G) systems. FC-based filtering is presented as a generic multimode waveform processing engine while, following the progress of 5G new radio standardization in the Third-Generation Partnership Project, the main focus is on efficient generation and processing of subband-filtered cyclic prefix orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CP-OFDM) signals. First, a matrix model for analyzing FC filter processing responses is presented and used for designing optimized multiplexing of filtered groups of CP-OFDM physical resource blocks (PRBs) in a spectrally well-localized manner, i.e., with narrow guardbands. Subband filtering is able to suppress interference leakage between adjacent subbands, thus supporting independent waveform parametrization and different numerologies for different groups of PRBs, as well as asynchronous multiuser operation in uplink. These are central ingredients in the 5G waveform developments, particularly at sub-6-GHz bands. The FC filter optimization criterion is passband error vector magnitude minimization subject to a given subband band-limitation constraint. Optimized designs with different guardband widths, PRB group sizes, and essential design parameters are compared in terms of interference levels and implementation complexity. Finally, extensive coded 5G radio link simulation results are presented to compare the proposed approach with other subband-filtered CP-OFDM schemes and time-domain windowing methods, considering cases with different numerologies or asynchronous transmissions in adjacent subbands. Also the feasibility of using independent transmitter and receiver processing for CP-OFDM spectrum control is demonstrated

ACINO: Second year report on dissemination and communication activities

This ACINO deliverable presents the communication and dissemination activities performed by the consortium during the first two years of the project. We have communicated using our website, Twitter account and by various communication actions: The website saw over 3000 unique visitors during the first year and over 4000 during the second year; The consortium Twitter account had 49 followers at the end of the first year and 80 at the end of the second year. We posted 50 tweets during the first year and 40 more during the second year; We also held a press release and an interview in a magazine during the first year, and had three more similar communication actions during the second year. The dissemination activities have been composed of participation in public events where the goals and concepts of ACINO were presented via publications, presentation, workshops, courses and demonstrations. Overall, over forty different dissemination activities have been performed: An article has been published in peer-reviewed, open access Journal of Green Engineering; Eighteen articles have been published in conferences: four during the first year and fourteen during the second. One of them was a post-deadline and six were invited papers; We have co-organised three workshops: the Workshop on Network Function Virtualization and Programmable Networks at EUCNC 2015, the first Workshop on Multi-Layer Network Orchestration (NetOrch) at ICTON 2016 and the stand-alone ONOS/CORD workshop; We have held 16 talks, tutorial, courses and demonstrations; Consortium members have won two prizes for work related to ACINO: a team of developers won the 3rd prize of the ONOS Build Hackathon, and Telefónica won the Best SDN-NFV solution award at the LTE and 5G World conference by presenting a solution in which Sedona Systems was involved; We have contributed to six IETF standardisation documents and done some implementation and test of these standards. We have contributed to two open source projects: the NetPhony and ONOS controllers, with the implementation of main features being accepted and merged to the core code of these open source projects. Finally, the project has devised detailed plans for its dissemination activities for the last year of the project. We have: Confirmed plans for the organisation of a workshop, the second edition of the NetOrch workshop, co-located with the ICTON conference; A solid plan for continued dissemination in conferences (already five accepted conference papers, five talk invitations and a list of conferences of interest) and in peer-reviewed journals, with one article accepted for publication in the Journal of Lightwave Technology, two articles under review and plans for four more; Some more planned contribution to open source projects

Ultra reliable communication via optimum power allocation for repetition and parallel coding in finite block-length

Abstract. In this thesis we evaluate the performance of several retransmission mechanisms with ultra-reliability constraints. First, we show that achieving a very low packet outage probability by using an open loop setup is a difficult task. Thus, we resort to retransmission schemes as a solution for achieving the required low outage probabilities for ultra reliable communication. We analyze three retransmission protocols, namely Type-1 Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ), Chase Combining Hybrid ARQ (CC-HARQ) and Incremental Redundancy (IR) HARQ. For these protocols, we develop optimal power allocation algorithms that would allow us to reach any outage probability target in the finite block-length regime. We formulate the power allocation problem as minimization of the average transmitted power under a given outage probability and maximum transmit power constraint. By utilizing the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions, we solve the optimal power allocation problem and provide closed form solutions. Next, we analyze the effect of implementing these protocols on the throughput of the system. We show that by using the proposed power allocation scheme we can minimize the loss of throughput that is caused from the retransmissions. Furthermore, we analyze the effect of the feedback delay length in our protocols.Optimaalista tehoallokointia toisto- ja rinnakkaiskoodaukseen käyttävä erittäin luotettava tiedonsiirto äärellisillä lohkonpituuksilla. Tiivistelmä. Tässä työssä arvioidaan usean uudelleenlähetysmenetelmän suorituskykyä erittäin luotettavan tietoliikenteen järjestelmäoletuksin. Aluksi osoitetaan, että hyvin alhaisen pakettilähetysten katkostodennäköisyyden saavuttaminen avoimen silmukan menetelmillä on haastava tehtävä. Niinpä työssä turvaudutaan uudelleenlähetyspohjaisiin ratkaisuihin, joilla on mahdollista päästä suuren luotettavuuden edellyttämiin hyvin alhaisiin katkostodennäköisyyksiin. Työssä analysoidaan kolmea uudelleenlähetysprotokollaa, nimittäin tyypin 1 automaattista uudelleen lähetystä (ARQ), Chase Combining -tyyppistä hybridi-ARQ -protokollaa (CC-HARQ) ja redundanssia lisäävää HARQ-protokollaa (IR-HARQ). Näille protokollille kehitetään optimaalisia tehon allokointialgoritmeja, joiden avulla päästään halutulle katkostodennäköisyystasolle äärellisillä lohkonpituuksilla. Tehon allokointiongelma muotoillaan keskimääräisen lähetystehon minimointiongelmaksi toteuttaen halutun katkostodennäköisyyden ja maksimilähetystehorajoituksen. Käyttämällä Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) -ehtoja ratkaistaan optimaalinen tehoallokointiongelma ja esitetään ratkaisut suljetussa muodossa. Seuraavaksi analysoidaan näiden protokollien järjestelmätason toteutusta läpäisykykytarkastelujen avulla. Niillä osoitetaan, että ehdotetulla tehon allokointimenetelmällä voidaan minimoida uudelleen lähetyksistä aiheutuvia suorituskykyhäviöitä. Lisäksi työssä tutkitaan takaisinkytkentäviiveen vaikutusta esitettyihin protokolliin