6G NeXt aims to develop a scalable, modular and flexible infrastructure to enable a variety of industrial and end-user use cases with requirements exceeding the capabilities of today’s 5G network in terms of intelligence, performance and efficiency. 

One focus of the project is to build a high-performance, high-speed backbone layer that interacts with the underlying network layer via programmable interfaces. This enables computing tasks to be processed locally, in the edge cloud or in different areas of the central cloud. Computing capacity is allocated according to requirements for latency, energy consumption, cost, among other resources. Additional services and extensions optimize cloud infrastructures commonly used today. 

In the pioneering 6G NeXt project, two particularly demanding applications with different requirements are being developed as examples: 

Intelligent drones

A novel anti-collision system for aviation using the example of drones at airports with mixed air traffic. The flight paths of aircraft are monitored in real time and collision risks are predicted using algorithms. In the event of danger, evasive maneuvers are calculated centrally, and, unlike current solutions, the aircraft is also controlled via 6G. This application requires low latency, synchronization of data streams and the possibility to distribute data calculations (split computing).

HOLOCOM (Holographic Communication)

An interactive end-to-end transmission of real-time 3D holographic video with photorealistic content and realistic 3D depth for video conferencing and monitoring/inspection of objects by drones. This application requires high bit rates upstream and downstream as well as distributed and intelligent video processing.