Nokia has been chosen by the European Commission’s Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) to lead its SUSTAIN-6G lighthouse project.
The main goal of the SUSTAIN-6G project is to develop solutions that provide super-fast connectivity while meeting sustainability challenges. The consortium will spend time looking at three targeted areas drawn from the United Nations’ Sustainable Develop Goals:
- Energy smart grid
- e-Health and telemedicine
- Agriculture
Energy grid
Nokia and the SUSTAIN-6G consortium will explore how to use 6G to create microgrids that manage electricity demand. This will include the use of artificial intelligence for real-time control over networks.
The consortium said this could lead to more resilient grids that minimize disruptions by drawing energy from diverse sources as regions transition to renewable sources like solar and wind.
Healthcare engineering
Using 6G, the project will examine how it can be used to securely transmit and analyze medical data that could lead to the foundation of new home-based online assessment services.
These networks would be able to improve treatment process and diagnosis in real-time, particularly in rural or underserved communities. Additionally, the combination of AI and 6G potentially could detect disease outbreaks at an early stage to alert communities and governments to provide assistance or quarantine areas.
Agriculture
Finally, the SUSTAIN-6G project will investigate what smart agricultural needs can be improved upon, specifically:
- High bandwidth
- Sensing
- Telemetry
- Data analytics
- Automation
6G’s cloud capabilities could be used to automate harvesting tasks or provide data from sensors, climate stations, soil analysis and satellite imagery to improve yields and monitor crops in real time.
Groundwork for 6G
This is the third project that Nokia has been selected to lead. The first, Hexa-X, is designed for laying the groundwork for pre-standardization, and the second, Hexa-X-II, to research potential use cases.
The SNS JU’s SUSTAIN-6G includes network equipment and services vendors, telecoms, industrial equipment manufacturers, research institutions, universities and small- and medium-sized businesses.
It is slated to begin in January 2025 and be completed in 2027.
