by Benedict Chua, Associate Editor
The U.S. Department of Defense has kicked off an Innovate Beyond 5G (IB5G) Program to foster collaborative partnerships with industry and academia for 5G-to-NextG wireless technologies.
3 main projects are highlighted:
- Open6G — a new industry-university cooperative effort that aims to jumpstart 6G systems research on open radio access networks (Open RAN). The effort will focus on Open RAN research and open source implementation of 5G protocol stack features to support emerging beyond/enhanced 5G applications. Open6G will serve as the DoD’s hub for development, testing, and integration of trusted enhancements, supporting an industry and federal government NextG ecosystem pursuing 6G technology goals. Led by a $1.77 million anchor award from IB5G, the project is managed by Northeastern University’s Kostas Research Institute through a cooperative agreement with the Army Research Laboratory. The technical effort will be housed at Northeastern University’s Institute for Wireless Internet of Things.
- Spectrum Exchange Security and Scalability — a new project with Zylinium Research, which recently demonstrated a Spectrum Exchange for dynamic spectrum allocation on the Platform for Open Wireless Data-drive Experimental Research (POWDER) at the University of Utah, which is part of the Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research program funded by the National Science Foundation. This current effort will leverage blockchain in order to provide data persistence, scalability, and robustness to create a secure and distributed Spectrum Exchange. Zylinium’s Spectrum Exchange research was funded $1.64 million by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)), representing a prime example of government inter-agency and industry collaboration in the interest of advancing spectrum sharing techniques and machine-driven network capabilities.
- IB5G — in collaboration with Nokia Bell Labs, to develop resilient, large-scale, Massive Multi-Input/Multi-Output (MIMO) from MHz to GHz project. This project was awarded $3.69 million by OUSD (R&E)/IB5G under an Open Broad Agency Announcement solicitation for Advanced Wireless Communications research. The effort will explore key technology components that enable scaling MIMO technology across different bands/bandwidths and DoD-oriented use cases.
“The DoD has a vital interest in advancing 5G-to-NextG wireless technologies and concept demonstrations,” said Dr. Sumit Roy, IB5G Program Director. “These efforts represent our continuing investments via public and private sector collaboration on research & development for critical Beyond 5G technology enablers necessary to realize high performance, secure, and resilient network operations for the future warfighter.”
Next G Alliance outlines North America’s roadmap for 6G
by Benedict Chua, Associate EditorATIS’ Next G Alliance published a Roadmap to 6G report that presents the first 6G vision for North America and describes major steps that industry, government and academia should take to ensure North American wireless leadership for the next decade.ATIS said more than 600 experts from 80 Next G Alliance members representing industry, government and academia came together to create the 43-page report.The following…