A 5G mobile network architecture to support vertical industries

The telecom industry is moving from a "horizontal" service delivery model, where services are defined independent of their consumers, toward a "vertical" delivery model, where the provided services are tailored to specific industry sectors and verticals. In order to enable this transition, an end-to-end comprehensive 5G architecture is needed, with capabilities to support the use cases of the different vertical industries. A key feature of this architecture is the implementation of network slicing over a single infrastructure to provision highly heterogeneous vertical services, as well as a network slicing management system capable of handling simultaneous slices. On top of the network slicing technology, functionality needs to be devised to deploy the slices required by the different vertical players and provide them with a suitable interface to manage their slice. In this article, we design a 5G mobile network architecture to support vertical industries. The proposed architecture builds on ongoing standardization efforts at 3GPP and ETSI, and incorporates additional modules to provide enhanced MANO and control functionality as well as artificial-intelligence-based data analytics. On top of these modules, a service layer is provided to offer vertical players an easyto- use interface to manage their services.This work was supported by the H2020 5G-TOURS European project (Grant Agreement No. 856950)

When Forcing Collaboration is the Most Sensible Choice: Desirability of Precautionary and Dissuasive Mechanisms to Manage Multiparty Privacy Conflicts

Individuals share increasing amounts of personal multimedia data, exposing themselves (uploaders) as well as others (data subjects). Non-consensual sharing of multimedia data that depicts others raises so-called multi-party privacy conflicts (MPCs), which can have severe consequences. To limit the incidence of MPCs, a family of Precautionary mechanisms have recently been developed that force uploaders to collaborate with the other data subjects to prevent MPCs. However, there is still very little work on understanding how users perceive the Precautionary mechanisms together with which ones they prefer and why. In addition, Precautionary mechanisms have some limitations, e.g., they require linking content to the co-owners’ identity. Therefore, we also explore alternatives to Precautionary mechanisms and propose a new class of solutions—Dissuasive mechanisms—that aim at deterring the uploaders from sharing without consent. We then present a user-centriccomparison of Precautionary and Dissuasive mechanisms, through a large-scale survey (N=1792). Our results showed that respondents prefer Precautionary to Dissuasive mechanisms. These enforce collaboration, provide more control to the data subjects, but also they reduce uploaders’ uncertainty around what is considered appropriate for sharing. We learned that threatening legal consequences is the most desirable Dissuasive mechanism, and that respondents prefer the mechanisms that threaten users with immediate consequences (compared with delayed consequences). Dissuasive mechanisms are in fact well received by frequent sharers and older users, while Precautionary mechanisms are preferred by women and younger users. We discuss the implications for design, including considerations about side leakages, consent collection, and censorship

6G vision, value, use cases and technologies from European 6G Flagship project Hexa-X

Abstract 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, 6 th 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

Hexa-X:the European 6G flagship project

Abstract Hexa-X will pave the way to the next generation of wireless networks (Hexa) by explorative research (X). The Hexa-X vision is to connect human, physical, and digital worlds with a fabric of sixth generation (6G) key enablers. The vision is driven by the ambition to contribute to objectives of growth, global sustainability, trustworthiness, and digital inclusion. Key 6G value indicators and use cases are defined against the background of technology push, society and industry pull as well as objectives of technology sovereignty. Key areas of research have been formulated accordingly to include connecting intelligence, network of networks, sustainability, global service coverage, extreme experience, and trustworthiness. Critical technology enablers for 6G are developed in the project including, sub-THz transceiver technologies, accurate stand-alone positioning and radio-based imaging, improved radio performance, artificial intelligence (AI) / machine learning (ML) inspired radio access network (RAN) technologies, future network architectures and special purpose solutions including future ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) schemes. Besides technology enablers, early trials will be carried out to help assess viability and performance aspects of the key technology enablers. The 6G Hexa-X project is integral part of European and global research effort to help define the best possible next generation of networks