Integrated Radar and Communications (JRC) can satisfy the apparent demand for applications based on object detection, tracking, ranging, and positioning. JRC is, therefore, often seen as candidate technology for 6G mobile systems. Implementing JRC will require novel approaches in many research and engineering fields, including protocol design, digital and analog signal processing, and hardware development. The ongoing debates on JRC already include many white papers and research articles ranging in content from very specific technical problems to comprehensive bird’s eye-level reviews. This paper represents the work within the Open6GHub research project in Germany, which aims to investigate and implement potential end-to-end solutions for 6G. In this framework, we propose a consolidated vision for potential JRC architectural approaches. The subsequent discussion on integrating radar sensing with communications highlights this technology’s state-of-the-art and presents relevant opportunities and challenges.

The sixth generation (6G) mobile communication networks are expected to intelligently integrate into various aspects of modern digital society, including smart cities, homes, health-care, transportation, and factories. While offering a multitude of services, it is likely that societies become increasingly reliant on 6G infrastructure. Any disruption to these digital services, whether due to human or technical failures, natural disasters, or terrorism, would significantly impact citizens’ daily lives. Hence, 6G networks need not only to provide high-performance services but also to be resilient in maintaining essential services in the face of potentially unknown challenges. This paper provides a general review of the state of the art on resilient systems, definitions, concepts, and approaches. Moreover, it introduces a comprehensive concept, i.e., resilience-by-design (RBD), in three different levels for designing resilient 6G communication networks, summarizing our initial studies within the German Open6GHub project. First, we outline the general RBD enabling principles and discuss their related sub-categories. Next, adopting an interdisciplinary approach, we propose to embed these principles across all 6G layers/perspectives including electronics, physical channel, network components and functions, networks, services, and cross-layer and cross-infrastructure considerations and discuss their challenges. We further elaborate the RBD principles and their realizations along with several 6G use-cases. The paper is concluded by presenting a comprehensive list of open problems for future research on 6G resilience.

This paper introduces new functionalities for industrial safety applications using the wireless infrastructure of the IEEE 802.11 standard. The new amendments (n/ac/ad) for the 2.4, 5, and 60-GHz-band support additional high data rate modes, for e.g. video applications and device-to-device (D2D) communication. The huge bandwidth in the 60-GHz-band enables precise localization. However, Listen-Before-Talk (LBT) has to be used in order to guarantee fair channel access possibilities and coexistence of many devices. The access requirements are regulated (e.g. by ETSI for the European region). To cope with the uncertainty of coexistence and the special channel conditions in an industrial environment a multi-band PHY and MAC solution with multi-link-connectivity (MLC) support is introduced. This enables highly reliable low-latency wireless communication links for industrial safety applications. The simultaneous Round-Trip-Time-of-Flight (RTToF) ranging measurements enable position based features, like the introduced virtual safe zone.

The rapid evolution of cellular networks, driven by the proliferation of mobile devices and the exponential growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), has significantly advanced wireless communication technologies. Fifth generation of wireless communications technology (5G) enhanced data rates, latency, and network capacity, resulting in the emergence of new applications. However, the sixth generation (6G) is foreseen to support a new set of use cases with diverse requirements. This paper explores the critical role of artificial intelligence (AI) in shaping the trajectory from 5G to 6G. We discuss AI applications in 5G for network planning, resource allocation, traffic management, and security, as well as propose infrastructure upgrades, like edge servers and enhanced network topologies, to support AI in 6G. Additionally, we outline a visionary perspective on AI’s potential contributions to 6G, highlighting its role in enabling innovative services and applications. By providing this forward-looking perspective, this paper aims to stimulate discussion and guide the development of intelligent and autonomous 6G networks.

Frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radars are becoming increasingly important in industrial applications due to their low cost, simple signal processing, and high resolution. The research is driven by the growing trend of radar applications in industrial settings, including tasks like autonomous robot navigation, radar-based monitoring of humans, and enhancing safety across various scenarios, such as smart factories, traffic control, or environmental monitoring. The network of distributed sensor nodes is a feature to be implemented by the sixth generation of wireless mobile networks. As a result, 6G will become an enabler technology that will develop even further use cases and advance the expansion of these technologies. Therefore, the mutual interference of these sensor systems is becoming highly relevant since they can be avoided by scheduling the individual resources of the sensor nodes by a network structure. This paper investigates the interference behavior of FMCW radar sensors in a dense indoor scenario. In these environments, in particular, the reliability of the sensor system plays an important role, and disruption can have critical consequences like not recognizing a target, triggering a false alarm, or the complete failure of the sensing. To correctly classify the expected interference in the overall context, the paper investigates the physical layer effects on the performance, such as multipath propagation, channel spread, delay, Doppler shift, and attenuation. By evaluating these effects using state-of-the-art signal processing, it was revealed that a high channel spread in particular and the dynamics of the radar channel can significantly reduce the detection quality, as the interference power can exceed the received power by up to 20 dB, depending on the scenario. The simulation results given in this paper show that a potential communication between the radars and compliance with a synchronization delay, the interference problems can be reliably prevented with an appropriately designed anti-aliasing filter. Our simulations have quantified the detection performance under interference through the entire signal chain by evaluating the physical layer, the radar signal processing with non-idealities, and the hardware. The paper has investigated interference probability in indoor environments by examining radars with uncoordinated transmissions. Integrating findings from the physical propagation characteristics, the deviations in chirp durations, and the frequency of interference cases offers insights into the potential risk of interference.

Joint communications and sensing (JCAS) is regarded as a key technology of 6G communications since it allows the integration of sensing functions into communications networks with lower hardware costs, less energy consumption, and saved spectrum. As distributed sensing benefits from increased spatial diversity and accuracy, the combination of coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission technology and JCAS has become an attractive research direction. CoMP transmission has been applied in 4G and 5G communications networks due to its attractive capability in suppressing inter-cell interference and improving channel capacity, while CoMP sensing and CoMP JCAS have been widely discussed in recent years. However, relevant researches mainly focus on waveform design and optimization issues in the processes of CoMP signal transception and processing, while their system architecture and operation modes are less discussed. To fill the blank in these areas and discuss the benefits provided by CoMP JCAS, in this work, based on the modern CoMP transmission technologies in state-of-the-art mobile network architecture, we analyze the network architecture and required enabler technologies of CoMP JCAS in future mobile networks, focusing on the sensing aspect. In addition, we propose the potential sensing operation and clustering types and discuss their respective advantages and shortcomings. In the simulation, the sensing coverage and accuracy of different CoMP sensing types and conventional standalone sensing are compared. The simulation results show that CoMP sensing outperforms conventional single-radar sensing in accuracy, and the difference between them increases with the distance between the sensors. In addition, it is described that the coordinated passive sensing scheme extends the service area, while the active sensing scheme benefits from higher accuracy with the same bandwidth.