6GTandem aims to achieve a competitive advantage by defining and shaping the future of 6G infrastructures in Europe and contributing to the long-term impact of smart, flexi - ble, and scalable Radio Access Network (RAN) evolution and offering hardware products that will reach a unique level in terms of Radio Frequency (RF) performance, cost-, spectrum- and energy-efficiency in the global market.
In particular, 6GTandem focuses on the following objectives:
• Develop the 6GTandem system presenting an optimized combination of a sub-THz and a lower-frequency infrastructure.
• Develop models for the tandem system in terms of hardware impairments, propagation and impact of the radio environment .
• Design waveforms for dual-frequency systems with control information.
• Develop fully integrated communication links.
• Demonstrate and validate the concept to identify performance bottlenecks and to guide the future research directions in- and beyond the project lifetime.
Massive MIMO (multiple input multiple out) technology was successfully deployed in 5G. However, the Massive MIMO can suffer from large quality-of-service variations when operating at very high frequencies. Moreover, it exhibits large physical dimensions and involves high installation and maintenance costs. Finally, yet importantly, excessive power dissipation along with the associated high heat concentration is a practical issue of the co-located massive MIMO architecture, resulting in challenges in building and deploying such systems. The distributed MIMO approach is an alternative to such centralized architecture that reduces the impact of the above problems and has the potential to offer consistent excellent service levels in the intended network coverage zone with lower output power.
The deployment of a large number of distributed antenna units for D-MIMO faces some technical challenges which as well becomes a costly solution. To address this, our project introduces a radio stripe concept, utilizing low-cost plastic fibers to transmit sub-THz communication signals from a central unit to distributed antenna units, thereby mitigating cost and losses associated with current technologies.
This project is vital for society by offering new services, improving resilience, reducing energy consumption, and minimizing electromagnetic exposure (by geometrically distributing the antennas over an area). It addresses global warming, addresses EMF concerns, and enables diverse applications, especially for smart cities and homes.
