Keysight Technologies, a leading technology company that aims to deliver advanced design and validation solutions to help accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, has announced the company joins forces with 16 organisations to create 6G-SANDBOX, a pan-European testbed for 6G experimentation and validation of 5G-Advanced and 6G capabilities. As a part of 6G-SANDBOX, Keysight will act as the project coordinator.
Funded by Horizon Europe, 6G-SANDBOX is one of 35 new projects launched by Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU), which the European Commission (EC) established in 2021 to support the development of smart communication components, systems and networks considered essential in building out a first-class European supply chain for advanced 5G and 6G technologies.
The project aims to develop EU-wide experimentation platforms to test promising technical 6G enablers, including zero-touch management, flexible multi-tenancy architecture, network intelligence, security, Digital Twins, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces.
The 6G testbed will combine digital and physical nodes to deliver fully configurable, manageable and controllable end-to-end networks for validating new technologies and research advancements for 6G. The project offers organisations opportunities to conduct trials at four experimental platforms located in Malaga, Spain; Berlin, Germany; Oulu, Finland; and Athens, Greece.
“Keysight is pleased to partner with leading service providers, vendors, research institutes and universities to drive a key EC-funded research, innovation and trial project designed to support the development and deployment of next-generation network technologies and connected devices,” said Michael Dieudonne, 6G-SANDBOX Project Coordinator, representing Keysight. “As an open 6G experimentation environment, 6G-SANDBOX will underpin an accelerated pan-European green and Digital Transformation, in line with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
The 6G-SANDBOX project participants include: COSMOTE; Eurescom; FOGUS Innovations & Services P.C.; Fraunhofer FOKUS; INFOLYSIS P.C.; Institute of Software Engineering and Technologies (ITIS) at the University of Malaga; Keysight Technologies Inc.; Lenovo; National Centre for Scientific Research (NCSR) Demokritos; Nokia eXtended Reality Lab; OpenNebula; OWO; Queen’s University Belfast; Telefonica and University of Oulu.
“Keysight’s innovative spirit is at the heart of where multiple technologies will converge to support an intelligent, secure, cloud-native and sustainable 6G network architecture,” said Giampaolo Tardioli, Vice President of Keysight’s 6G and Next Generation Technology Programme. “Well-established partnerships across 5G ecosystems, combined with a unique set of capabilities derived from advanced and scalable technology platforms, enable Keysight to underpin the creation of an open testbed for 6G research.”
“Experimentally driven research has been at the forefront of European innovation of new networks. Testbeds enable the trial and evaluation of service concepts, technologies, system solutions and business models to a point where risks associated with launching these commercially are minimised,” said Anastasius Gavras, Programme Manager at Eurescom. “Therefore, Eurescom firmly believes that operational 6G testbeds, such as 6G-SANDBOX, need to be an inherent part of the 6G ecosystem for the industry to innovate.”
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