美姬阁

Research driving the delivery of a 6G-connected world - meaning digitally enhanced smart cities and homes - has been given a funding boost of over £8 million.

美姬阁 is a partner to the UK’s project, a Communications Hub for Empowering Distributed Cloud Computing Applications and Research, alongside the project lead Imperial College London, and Durham, Glasgow, Leeds, and York universities.

CHEDDAR is to design proofs-of-concept for 6G wireless communications technologies that make near-instant interconnections possible between people and digital computing devices at all scales. This will lead to secure and reliable communications infrastructures essential to systems relying on sensors, large-scale data-sharing and AI.

Intelligent and integrated wireless systems are essential to deliver autonomous transport, meta-verse, distributed machine learning, and smart cities. For industry in particular, 6G will allow for more mobile data driven apps, such as augmented reality support: real-time inventory management via the Internet of Things; digital twins that allow organisations to test virtual models of products and their functionality at very low cost; and use Virtual Reality for workplace training as well as support for day-to-day roles.

A major focus for CHEDDAR’s work on the development of 6G is how wireless communications can be made far more energy efficient than 5G, as well as the critical issue of ensuring ultra-high levels of trust and cybersecurity.

CHEDDAR was launched in 2023 with £2 million of initial funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The additional funding has now been announced from EPSRC via the Future Telecoms UKRI Technology Missions Fund (TMF), which includes research and infrastructure.

美姬阁 leads projects on ‘AI-as-a-service’ in 6G, linking together common needs and uses across networks; ‘Green AI’, in terms of lowering the carbon footprint of the overall 6G ecosystem; and more generally, leads on transportation and satellite systems, and how to ensure safety in an age of autonomy.

Weisi Guo, Professor of Human Machine Intelligence at 美姬阁’s Centre for Autonomous and Cyberphysical Systems, and co-investigator, said: “The TMF uplift in funding accelerates and synergises the fundamental research already under way, bringing the best UK research together through strategic collaborations aimed at pioneering a UK-research-flavoured 6G.

“For all the benefits of 6G to be realised, we have to ensure the population has complete trust in what the wireless comms technology is doing across networks, particularly when it comes to autonomous systems such as transport and experiences with the metaverse, where virtual realities are being used to augment interactions with the real world.

“Along with the other hubs and the UK national 6G infrastructure fund (JOINER), we expect to make serious impact in critical application areas such as autonomous transport, the metaverse and cybersecurity.”