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Towards standardized 6G connectivity for ambiently-powered energy neutral IoT devices

Project description

6G technologies for energy-neutral Internet of things devices

The Internet of things (IoT) has the potential to address major global challenges. However, to ensure a sustainable future, IoT innovations must tackle the issue of powering the growing number of devices. Relying on batteries that require regular replacement or recharging is impractical due to high maintenance costs, environmental concerns and safety hazards. The EU-funded AMBIENT-6G project will develop energy-neutral devices (ENDs) that connect to the IoT using innovative ultra-low-power 6G technologies. These devices will harness ambient energy and use wireless power transfer to achieve energy autonomy. The project will design hardware and software solutions for intelligent ENDs and their 6G network infrastructure, introducing innovations in energy harvesting and management and communications technology.

Objective

Internet of Things (IoT) technology is widely recognised as having the potential to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges. However, to truly benefit society and enable a sustainable future, IoT innovations will need to address the technology gap that exists in powering the rising number of IoT devices. Specifically, the AMBIENT-6G consortium argues that it will be impossible to power hundreds of billions of future IoT devices with batteries that need to be replaced or recharged manually. The maintenance costs, environmental impact, and safety hazards will just be too high. Instead, AMBIENT-6G proposes a new class of energy-neutral devices (ENDs) that will be connected to the IoT through novel ultra-low-power 6G technologies. ENDs exploit ambient energy harvesting or wireless power transfer to recharge their storage and power their operations, allowing them to achieve decades-long energy autonomy. The overall objective of AMBIENT-6G is to design, prototype, validate, and standardize hard- and software technology solutions for intelligent ENDs, and the 6G network infrastructure that connects them to the Internet. To achieve this objective, the project will provide technological innovations in terms of (i) END hardware and software components to enable energy harvesting and management, as well as backscatter and active wireless communications, (ii) a new 6G low-power wide area network technology with significantly lower energy consumption than current technologies, and (iii) machine learning both on-device and orchestrated along the Cloud-Edge-Device continuum to support intelligent management of the device and network resources, as well as local application data processing. AMBIENT-6G will maximize the impact of the above innovations by actively participating in 3GPP Ambient-IoT and other related standardization activities, and adopting an open science approach that facilitates further integration of the AMBIENT-6G technology in follow-up research.

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-JU-RIA - HORIZON JU Research and Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-JU-SNS-2024

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Coordinator

INTERUNIVERSITAIR MICRO-ELECTRONICA CENTRUM
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 057 980,25
Address
KAPELDREEF 75
3001 Leuven
Belgium

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Region
Vlaams Gewest Prov. Vlaams-Brabant Arr. Leuven
Activity type
Research Organisations
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 057 980,25

Participants (10)

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