Intensive cooperation for future 6G technology

The first 5G net­works have only just gone into oper­a­tion in Ger­many, and sci­ence and com­pa­nies are already look­ing at the sixth gen­er­a­tion of mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tions. In a joint project, the tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Con­ti­nen­tal and Jacobs Uni­ver­si­ty are research­ing future appli­ca­tions of 6G for auto­mo­tive con­nec­tiv­i­ty and autonomous dri­ving. The project will ini­tial­ly run for three years and will cre­ate three new posi­tions for doc­tor­al stu­dents at Jacobs Uni­ver­si­ty. “With this, we are inten­si­fy­ing our very suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jacobs Uni­ver­si­ty, which has been in place for years,” says Dr. Karsten Michels, Head of Research & Advanced Engi­neer­ing. An impor­tant top­ic of research is safe­ty in autonomous dri­ving and the pro­tec­tion of road users. The com­pa­ny has a long tra­di­tion of devel­op­ing safe­ty technologies.

“We are pur­su­ing Vision Zero. Our goal is: no more traf­fic fatal­i­ties, no more injuries, no more acci­dents. We can achieve that.”

- Dr. David González G., senior research engi­neer and project manager

On the road to ful­fill­ing this vision, 6G is an impor­tant tool. The wire­less net­work, which is expect­ed to launch in 2030, will trans­mit data up to 1,000 times faster than its pre­de­ces­sor tech­nol­o­gy, 5G. Laten­cy, i.e. the speed at which net­worked auto­mo­tive radio sig­nals are processed, will also improve sig­nif­i­cant­ly. This is of key impor­tance for autonomous dri­ving in par­tic­u­lar. Accu­rate real-time posi­tion­ing of vehi­cles and their dis­tances from oth­er vehi­cles, peo­ple or obsta­cles is need­ed to avoid accidents.

“Cars with­out con­nec­tiv­i­ty are like com­put­ers with­out the Inter­net,” says Dr. Giuseppe Thadeu Fre­itas de Abreu, pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and project leader on the Jacobs Uni­ver­si­ty side, describ­ing the impor­tance of wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion. “With 6G, the tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion is still ahead of us.” With 5G, he said, com­mu­ni­ca­tions have for the first time moved away from cell phones and enabled the “Inter­net of Things,” the exchange of infor­ma­tion from and with machines. With 6G, the net­work will not only be faster, more tar­get­ed and more ener­gy-effi­cient. New sources of infor­ma­tion will also be added, such as sen­sors and radar, which can be inte­grat­ed into the net­work and eval­u­at­ed with the help of arti­fi­cial intelligence.

The sci­en­tist Abreu is par­tic­u­lar­ly attract­ed by the appli­ca­tion ori­en­ta­tion of the coop­er­a­tion: “We are work­ing togeth­er on inno­va­tions that could one day make every­day life eas­i­er for many peo­ple.” The first joint project already pro­duced numer­ous inno­va­tions, and Abreu is con­fi­dent of achiev­ing sim­i­lar suc­cess­es with this project.