6G-BRICKS aims to deliverer an experimentation facility which a breakthrough 6G architecture, along with a set of reusable enablers (“bricks”) and experimentation tools. The 6G-BRICKS facility will showcase many architecture innovations, such as a disaggregated Management Plane and Operations Support System, to support extendibility, evolvability, and multi-tenancy. The aforementioned innovations are going well beyond centralized Cross-Domain Service Orchestrators (CDSOs) and Operations Support System/Business Support System (OSS/BSS) systems typically supported in 5G-PPP experimentation platforms. More specifically, the 6G-BRICKS architecture will include the following architectural tiers:
• The Experimentation Plane, which, acts as the entry point to the Facility. Mature frontend elements as part of the System Portal, a Service Catalogue and intent engine will be leveraged and extended as part of the Experimentation Plane, delivering intent driven, human-in-the-loop experimentation functionality. A unique testing tool based on Near-RT RIC is scheduled for the first time, giving experimenters access to low-level Radio Resource Management (RRM) and RAN slicing capabilities via standardized xApps. Moreover, the Experimentation Plane will offer BSS services to the 6G-BRICKS facility, allowing vertical application owners to upload their applications and Business Intents.
• The Management & Orchestration plane is deployed at each facility site as a unified controllability framework, via the groundbreaking Domain Management and Orchestration (DMO) framework. Explainable AI mechanisms are leveraged for policy translation and unification. This breakthrough architecture design supports provides explainable feedback to experimenters for potential SLA breaches and facilitates a loose coupling with the Experimentation Plane, avoiding bottlenecks. The 6G-BRICKS design also envisions close integration of computation and communication, deploying cognitive services must be adopted conducting complex placement and scaling operations, and delivering intelligence on demand for (extreme) edge to cloud continuum resource orchestration.
• 6G RAN infrastructure domain, where breakthrough 6G RAN technologies are integrated in reusable, self-contained modules with O-RAN interfaces to ensure the openness and reusability of the developed components. At the KUL site, a Distributed Cell-Free RAN is delivered, while the EUR site builds on the EUR OpenAirInterface O-RAN stack, which will be integrated with a RIS platform.
The 6G-BRICKS architecture adopts the Intent Driven Autonomous Networks (IDAN) paradigm, which builds on a three-layer design featuring intelligence at the Business, Service, and infrastructure domains. This is achieved via the concept of intent, which defines and communicates knowledge about requirements, goals and constraints to a system in a way that allows automated processes to reason about it and derive suitable decisions and actions. Intents are supplied by experimenters via the Experimentation Plane, which are automatically translated to service objectives. Moreover, automated intent activation and conflict resolution mechanisms are explored for the first time in the context of 6G networks.
