The 6G-SANDBOX project brings a complete and modular facility for the European experimentation ecosystem, which is expected to support for the next decade, the technology and research validation processes needed in the pathway towards 6G. The target is at technologies and research advances, that span over the entire service provisioning chain, and refer to user/data, control and management planes. In this direction, 6G-SANDBOX introduces the concept of Trial Networks, which refers to fully configurable, manageable and controlled end-to-end networks, composed of both digital and physical nodes.

The 6G-SANDBOX Trial Networks incorporate infrastructures distributed in EU (namely in Malaga, Athens, Berlin and Oulu) and offer to third parties (including experimenters from open calls) automated experimentation capabilities through a rich and extensible toolbox. Meant to create tangible and long-term impact, the 6G KPIs and KVIs that will be quantified with the facility, will be released to any interested party; while the set of developments and APIs that will be produced, will feed an open repository as an initial step to move the contributions and the lessons learned beyond the project boarders and define a European 6G library.

IS-Wireless will be deploying its disaggregated vRAN (including CU, DU, RIC and xApps) into the Malaga testbed. The testbed will be offered to external researchers and experimenters from September 2023. See the 1st OpenCall information – https://6g-sandbox.eu/opencall/open-call-1/

The 6GSANDOX ambition for the wireless disruption towards 6G is focused on three areas: (i) disaggregated and future-proof vRAN and programmability of RAN optimizations, (ii) delivery of sustainable design of a RIS antennas for 28 GHz and (iii) the provisioning of solutions for measuring the emerging THz solutions by means of a dedicated suite of test equipment and the dedicated laboratory. IS-Wireless is leading the task on “disruptive wireless technologies”. The topics related to workload prediction and placement, multi-cloud orchestration, as well as optimization of 6G RAN deployment KVIs will be addressed.