SNS experimental infrastructure

The project will leverage existing SNS JU Stream C and D project results, as well as results from European National Initiatives, aggregating testbed sites that can offer combined capabilities across Europe. The project should focus on integration, evaluation and validation beyond PoC of Stream B type of technologies for 6G KPIs and KVIs in a system context. The project should not engage in activities of interconnecting or federation, as these issues have been addressed in previous projects. The core of the activities is to run experiments, with some activities to maintain and expand the tool offered to the community.

The scope of this strand hence focuses on the following aspects:

• Accommodating a wide range of technologies towards 6G like RIS, ISAC/JCAS, NTN/5G, security, privacy, core evolution, AI, RAN evolution, network disaggregation, and any other relevant 6G subject as part of E2E setups for experimentation, see coverage of the 6 technological areas mentioned in the expected outcome, as example.

• Hosting advanced pilot “6G” use-cases not feasible during implementation lifecycle of ongoing Stream D projects due to the lack of maturity of the technology.

• Offering a well-defined catalogue of experimentation and KPI reporting tools that ensure repeatability, high level of automation, and comparison of results that provide valuable feedback to the developers and experimenters on potential shortcomings of the current prototype to facilitate technology maturation based on the experimental results.

• Offering users a low-barrier entry to an experimental facility enabling SNS-JU technologies, to run experiments.

• Providing trial facilities to enable hands on experience for engineer as part of their continuous learning and education.

• Integrating contributions from participants to expand the capabilities of the platforms with new features and capabilities.

• Ensuring security provisions for remote connectivity to the infrastructure for the experimenters.

• Providing plans on how to address the requirements for reusability and evolvability of the experimental platform over the lifetime of the SNS JU Programme.

The efforts are centralized around integration of technologies and execution of experimentation. Additional development will be strictly limited to maintenance and minimal integration effort of new technologies and prototypes, as the integration effort will be pushed on the experimenters. Platform upgrades and activities related to the integration of new technologies are also in scope as long as the running of experiments remains the core activity.

The platform will be open to any participant interested in running an experiment. There is no funding offered to the experimenters, who will propose to join according to their interest. The project will, however, include FSTP (Financial Support to Third Parties) to developers from current running SNS JU projects as a support to integrate their technologies into the platform. SNS projects in Phase 3 are expected to include integration and experimentation resources with the new infrastructure in their Grant Agreements. For SME and academia, the project will allocate up to 20% of the proposal budget on the FSTP mechanism in the form of up to 50 K€ grants to support the integration efforts of key technologies developed in previous SNS JU calls until Call 2025. Solutions from SNS JU Call 2027 projects are not eligible for FSTP and should include the effort to integrate into their project, as explained in the legal and financial set-up of the Grant Agreements.

Experimenters get full insight from the results to improve their solution. If an experimenter wishes so, they can also leave a version of the technology solution inside the platform for their own use or for reference/use of the SNS community. This is a way to showcase the experimenter technology, but also for them to run additional trials without needing to visit the platform (remote connectivity). Leaving the technology is an in-kind contribution on loan preferably for the remainder of the project transforming the platform to be a showroom for these 6G candidate technologies.