6G-ANNA

Holistic Approaches for 6th Generation Cellular Networks

Motivation

Innovative communications systems are key technologies for digitization and pave the way for a hyperconnected economy and society. The future mobile communications standard 6G will play an important role in this. Before market launch, which is expected around 2030, numerous technological and social issues still need to be resolved. It is already clear that simplified interaction between people and technology will be central to the development of 6G. Crucial to a functioning, hyperconnected world in which "everything interacts with everything" are powerful, trustworthy and sustainable 6G systems that take into account the European Union's principles of action and values from the ground up. It is therefore important for Germany to drive forward 6G research early and quickly in order to be able to exert a significant influence on the standardization of 6G.

Goals

The goal of the "6G-Access, Network of Networks, Automation & Simplification (6G-ANNA)" project is the development of a holistic design for the sixth generation of mobile communications that includes a closed end-to-end architecture. To this end, the fundamentals of radio access are first investigated, and innovative protocols and signal processing algorithms are designed and implemented. This is followed by the investigation of appropriate network management and orchestration approaches. The goal is to simplify and improve the interaction between humans, technologies and the environment. One contribution is made by new sensors and algorithms for the recognition of human movements. For example, digital twins of complex machines in manufacturing can be precisely mapped to control them remotely. Another focus is the investigation of 6G as a "network of networks" in which - similar to the Internet - different closed networks are flexibly interconnected. Here, the focus is on security aspects and resilience. Overall, flexibility and the reduction of energy consumption while maintaining the performance of the network are important goals in all research work - from individual radio access to the integration of multiple networks.

Innovation & Perspective

The "6G-ANNA" project contributes significantly to the development of technologies that will enable the introduction of 6G. German industry can build up the relevant know-how to deploy future 6G networks in a self-determined manner. Incentives are also being created to increase the production of key components in Germany and Europe. At the same time, it will be ensured that the requirements of Germany's leading industries are incorporated into the 6G standard. This way, 6G technologies will become part of leading technologies in Germany's key industries at an early stage. Overall, the results of the project contribute significantly to technological sovereignty in Germany and Europe.

Additional Information

Related publications

2024-01-01 Henning Stubbe, Sebastian Gallenmüller, Georg Carle, “The pos Experiment Controller: Reproducible & Portable Network Experiments,” in 2024 19th Wireless On-Demand Network Systems and Services Conference (WONS), 2024, pp. 1–8. [Pdf] [Bib]
2023-12-01 Max Helm, Georg Carle, “Predicting Latency Quantiles using Network Calculus-assisted GNNs,” in Proceedings of the 2nd on Graph Neural Networking Workshop 2023, Paris, France, Dec. 2023, pp. 13–18. [Pdf] [Slides] [Rawdata] [DOI] [Bib]
2023-12-01 Patrick Sattler, Johannes Zirngibl, Mattijs Jonker, Oliver Gasser, Georg Carle, Ralph Holz, “Packed to the Brim: Investigating the Impact of Highly Responsive Prefixes on Internet-wide Measurement Campaigns,” Proc. ACM Netw., vol. 1, no. CoNEXT3, Dec. 2023. [Url] [Pdf] [Homepage] [DOI] [Bib]
2023-12-01 Markus Sosnowski, Florian Wiedner, Eric Hauser, Lion Steger, Dimitrios Schoinianakis, Sebastian Gallenmüller, Georg Carle, “The Performance of Post-Quantum TLS 1.3,” in Proc. International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT), Paris, France, Dec. 2023. [Pdf] [Preprint] [Homepage] [Recording] [DOI] [Bib]
2023-11-01 Florian Wiedner, Alexander Daichendt, Jonas Andre, Georg Carle, “Control Groups Added Latency in NFVs: An Update Needed?,” in 2023 IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), Nov. 2023. [Pdf] [Homepage] [Bib]
2023-10-01 Max Helm, Georg Carle, “Synthesizing and Scaling WAN Topologies using Permutation-invariant Graph Generative Models,” in 19th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM 2023), Niagara Falls, Canada, Oct. 2023, p. 6. [Pdf] [Slides] [Rawdata] [Bib]
2023-10-01 Florian Wiedner, Max Helm, Alexander Daichendt, Jonas Andre, Georg Carle, “Containing Low Tail-Latencies in Packet Processing Using Lightweight Virtualization,” in 2023 35rd International Teletraffic Congress (ITC-35), Oct. 2023. [Pdf] [Homepage] [Bib]
2023-06-01 Benedikt Jaeger, Johannes Zirngibl, Marcel Kempf, Kevin Ploch, Georg Carle, “QUIC on the Highway: Evaluating Performance on High-Rate Links,” in International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Networking 2023 Conference (IFIP Networking 2023), Barcelona, Spain, Jun. 2023. [Preprint] [Rawdata] [DOI] [Bib]
2023-06-01 Henning Stubbe, Sebastian Gallenmüller, Manuel Simon, Eric Hauser, Dominik Scholz, Georg Carle, “Keeping Up to Date With P4Runtime: An Analysis of Data Plane Updates on P4 Switches,” in International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Networking 2023 Conference (IFIP Networking 2023), Barcelona, Spain, Jun. 2023, p. 9. [Pdf] [DOI] [Bib]
2023-06-01 Manuel Simon, Sebastian Gallenmüller, Georg Carle, “Never Miss Twice - Add-On-Miss Table Updates in Software Data Planes,” in KuVS Fachgespräch - Würzburg Workshop on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Next-Generation Communication Networks 2023 (WueWoWAS’23), Würzburg, Germany, Jun. 2023, p. 5. Best Workshop Contribution [Pdf] [Preprint] [Slides] [DOI] [Bib]
2023-03-01 Kilian Holzinger, Henning Stubbe, Manuel Simon, Sebastian Gallenmüller, Georg Carle, “Robuste und sichere Kommunikation für die Mobilfunknetze der Zukunft,” in Nationale Konferenz IT-Sicherheitsforschung, Postersession, Berlin, Germany, Mar. 2023. [Poster] [Bib]
2023-01-01 Marco Hoffmann, Gerald Kunzmann, Torsten Dudda, Ralf Irmer, Admela Jukan, Gordana Macher, Abdullah Ahmad, Florian R. Beenen, Arne Bröring, Felix Fellhauer, Gerhard Fettweis, Frank H. P. Fitzek, Norman Franchi, Florian Gast, Bernd Haberland, Sandra Hoppe, Sadaf Joodaki, Nandish P. Kuruvatti, Chu Li, Miguel Lopez, Fidan Mehmeti, Thomas Meyerhoff, Lorenzo Miretti, Giang T. Nguyen, Mohammad Parvini, Rastin Pries, Rafael F. Schaefer, Peter Schneider, Dominic Schupke, Stephanie Strassner, Henning Stubbe, Andra M. Voicu, “A secure and resilient 6G architecture vision of the German flagship project 6G-ANNA,” IEEE Access, 2023. [Pdf] [DOI] [Bib]
2022-12-01 Benedikt Jaeger, Max Helm, Lars Schwegmann, Georg Carle, “Modeling TCP Performance Using Graph Neural Networks,” in Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Graph Neural Networking, New York, NY, USA, Dec. 2022, pp. 18–23. [Url] [Pdf] [Rawdata] [DOI] [Bib]
2022-12-01 Sebastian Gallenmüller, Florian Wiedner, Johannes Naab, Georg Carle, “How Low Can You Go? A Limbo Dance for Low-Latency Network Functions,” Journal of Network and Systems Management, vol. 31, no. 20, Dec. 2022. [Url] [Pdf] [Homepage] [DOI] [Bib]
2022-10-01 Max Helm, Florian Wiedner, Georg Carle, “Flow-level Tail Latency Estimation and Verification based on Extreme Value Theory,” in 18th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM 2022), Thessaloniki, Greece, Oct. 2022. [Pdf] [Slides] [Bib]

Finished student theses

Author Title Type Advisors Year Links
Johannes Späth QUIC Performance Improvements Using DPDK MA Johannes Zirngibl, Benedikt Jaeger, Kilian Holzinger, Marcel Kempf 2023
Leon Krix On-The-Fly Network Erasure Coding Protocol for Delay and Loss-Sensitive Data BA Henning Stubbe, Kilian Holzinger 2023
Luca Otting Improving QUIC with User Space Networking BA Kilian Holzinger, Benedikt Jaeger, Johannes Zirngibl 2023
Alexander Anton Keil Comparison of One-Way Delay Measurement Approaches BA Kilian Holzinger, Florian Wiedner, Henning Stubbe 2023
Thomas Senftl Flexible Precise Path Property Emulation BA Kilian Holzinger, Sebastian Gallenmüller, Stefan Lachnit 2023
Paul Stephan Improvements to Reliable Multipath Forward Error Correction BA Kilian Holzinger, Henning Stubbe 2023
Felix Hahn Failure Detection through Active and Passive Techniques in P4 BA Manuel Simon, Eric Hauser 2023
Ruben Bachmann Comparison of DPDK-Enabled P4 Software Targets MA Manuel Simon, Sebastian Gallenmüller, Stefan Lachnit 2023
Martin Fritz State of the Art Assessment of Multipath QUIC MA Kilian Holzinger, Lion Steger, Marcel Kempf 2023
Stefan Lachnit Comparison of Hardware Timestamping Facilities for 100G Networks MA Sebastian Gallenmüller, Henning Stubbe, Florian Wiedner, Eric Hauser 2022
Tristan Döring Packet Selection using Concepts from IPFIX and PSAMP BA Kilian Holzinger, Henning Stubbe 2022
Jonas Kaps High-Performance Low-Latency Forward Error Correction Coding for Reliable Ethernet Communication MA Kilian Holzinger, Filip Rezabek 2022
Timon Tsiolis Analyzing the Extensibility of Programmable Data Planes BA Manuel Simon, Henning Stubbe, Sebastian Gallenmüller 2022

Open and running student theses

Author Title Type Advisors Year Links
Sebastian Warter Packet Processing with Programmable Data Planes and Trusted Execution Environments MA Manuel Simon, Sebastian Gallenmüller 2024
Nico Greger Improvements to Forward Erasure Correction Coding IDP Kilian Holzinger, Henning Stubbe, Stefan Lachnit 2023
Michael Hackl Improvements to Convolutional Forward Erasure Correction Coding IDP Kilian Holzinger, Henning Stubbe, Stefan Lachnit 2023
Felix Christ MASQUE-Proxying in User-Space MA Kilian Holzinger, Lion Steger 2023
offen Forward Erasure Correction Coding in QUIC IDP, MA Kilian Holzinger, Henning Stubbe, Stefan Lachnit 2023