LG, Fraunhofer team for 6G wireless link

Technology News | August 20, 2021

By Nick Flaherty

RF transmission Test and Measurement Wireless Communications

Europe’s largest applied research lab and LG Electronics (LG) have successfully demonstrated the transmission and reception of wireless 6G data over 100m outdoors.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft demonstrated a data link from the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) building and the Berlin Institute of Technology in Germany running at 155 to 175 GHz.

A custom power amplifier developed by LG, Fraunhofer HHI and Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) was used for a 15dB link using adaptive beamforming that alters the signal’s direction in accordance with changes to the channel and receiver position. It also used a high gain antenna switching which combines output signals of multiple power amplifiers and transmits them to specific antennas.

This is a key step in the development of 6G networks at higher frequencies that can carry more data but have a shorter range. This requires multiple adaptive antenna technology, as demonstrated by LG and Fraunhofer. However LG and Fraunhofer have not detailed the data rates achieved. Current commercialisation of millimetre wave (mmwave) links at 70GHz are enabling links of up to 10Gbit/s.

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LG sees global standardization of 6G targeted for 2025 and commercialization within four years after that. The company set up the LG-KAIST 6G Research Centre in 20189 in partnership with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Earlier this yar the partnership was expanded to include Keysight Technologies.

In June, LG was elected chair of the Applications Working Group of the Next G Alliance, the initiative of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) in North America to work on 6G.

“The success of this test demonstrates that we are ever closer to the successful application of terahertz radio communication spectrum in the upcoming 6G era,” said Dr. I.P. Park, president and CTO of LG Electronics. “Our successful partnerships with local and global research institutions and organizations to advance the development of 6G capabilities have been very rewarding.”

Next: Fraunhofer 6G Sentinel project – video

The Fraunhofer Institutes are working in the 6G SENTINEL project on flexible networks with adaptable infrastructure, in particular, flying platforms and satellites. Furthermore, the project will develop solutions for localization in 6G networks, as well as self-configurable, dynamic and distributed multi-core networks, and merge these things into an integrated 6G network architecture.

The participating institutes bring to the project complementary expertise from the fields of radio access networks, localization, software-based core networks, semiconductor technologies for THz communication and electronics packaging.

The project aims to develop a concept for a 6G architecture, radio channel models and link-level simulators for the frequency range between 100 and 300 GHz, a highly integrated terahertz transmission module for the D-band with fully integrated antenna, terahertz transmission modules based on photonics, transmission techniques for mobile THz connections, software modules for a flexible 6G core network, and fully integrated localization solutions.

www.lg.com; www.iis.fraunhofer.de/

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