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.

This paper presents a real-time millimeter-wave (mmWave) joint communication and sensing (JCAS) system, supporting bi-directional data communication with up to 5.8 Gbit/s coded data rate as well as mono-static radio detection and ranging (RADAR) with a range resolution of 6.7 cm and up to 2.1 kHz sensing rate. The same hardware resources, i.e. an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) baseband processor and a beam-steering phased array antenna frontend, the same signal waveform and the same frequency channel are used for both sensing and communication. After a description of one intended use case and the design constraints, the system architecture is described in detail. The focus is on two main modules, i.e. the advanced extensible interface 4 (AXI4) stream crossbar switch and the sensing controller, while changes of the basic OFDM baseband processor design are also explained. For the sensing function, the used hardware-based OFDM baseband processor does not provide a sufficiently precise synchronization of received frames, so a method for the temporal alignment of the received channel impulse responses (CIRs) for different beams is developed and assessed. The evaluation of the system performance and the measurement results highlight that it is possible to perform very precise sensing with an OFDM baseband processor purely developed for data communication. The presented method for the CIR alignment does not depend on the baseband signal processing and can be used in any JCAS system with full duplex sensing.

The next generation of wireless mobile networks will be driven by software and infrastructure virtualization. At the same time, the underlying hardware will become more diverse. Edge, intermediate and central network nodes will allow distributed deployments of never seen before scale. Non-terrestrial networks, nomadic networks and networks in networks promise more dynamicity, changing their topologies over time in predictable and unpredictable ways. To handle the complexity and dynamicity, a highly flexible and adaptable network is required. The key enablers of this complex digital communication system will be programmable infrastructures. From programmable access and flexible backhauls to zero-touch, adaptable and resilient control planes, we conducted research into advanced programmability at different layers of the network, within the Open6GHub project. In this article, we present innovative solutions for advanced programmable network infrastructure and show why they are essential for our vision of the programmable infrastructure of future wireless mobile networks.

Resilience is one of the key requirements for the future 6G wireless communication networks. The hardware components for the 6G network nodes should be self-aware and self-adaptive, allowing for timely detection of transient and permanent faults, and autonomous system reconfiguration in order to maintain the required functionality even in the case of anomalies. In this work, we present our preliminary design of a resilient processing platform intended to serve as a processing unit in 6G network nodes. The platform integrates a quad-core RISC-V processor, a triple-core neural network accelerator, memory blocks, a variety of on-chip sensors, and a customized controller for fault management and operating mode selection. The prototype of the processing platform has been implemented on a commercial FPGA platform, and the selected use case is the radar-based hand gesture recognition.

Joint communication and sensing (JCAS) is one of the key topics of the upcoming 6G mobile communication standard. We propose a novel three-step method to extract the position of reflectors from channel impulse responses (CIRs) obtained by multiple bi-static RADAR measurements. The method consists of the extraction of angle-of-departure (AoD) and angle-of-arrival (AoA), the computation of potential reflecting points and the classification of the propagation paths. For the extraction of AoD and AoA, we propose a novel algorithm with low computational effort. It has a better resolution than the step size of the underlying beam search process by utilizing the antenna beam pattern together with the evaluation of the CIR. The algorithm is compared to a straightforward approach in a raytracing simulation. The evaluation shows that the proposed novel algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art approach. Furthermore, we discuss the limitations of the proposed room reconstruction method and the potential impacts of physical effects not covered in the simulation.