6G-EWOC

Transportation is essential to modern society, providing access to places for living, work, social interactions, and commerce. However, road-based transportation brings several disadvantages. Heavy traffic causes congestion, lengthening travel times and wasting valuable time. Tragically, many people suffer serious injuries or even lose their lives in road accidents. Additionally, all vehicles, whether powered by combustion engines or electric motors, contribute to emissions. This project aims to improve this situation by enabling high-data-rate communication between vehicles and infrastructure to reduce accidents and improve traffic flow, thereby lowering emissions and congestion.

Many vehicles today are equipped with sensor systems that assist drivers in avoiding incidents. The next step is to connect vehicles to broader communication networks, allowing them to share a unified view of the traffic situation. This approach provides insights beyond a vehicle’s sensors, such as detecting potential hazards around corners. While promising, this vision poses challenges: vehicles must be capable of sharing and receiving data reliably, and sufficient communication bandwidth is needed to make this holistic traffic view possible.

Current radio-based systems primarily focus on downlink streaming from base stations to users. The 6G-EWOC project addresses this gap by developing optical wireless communication with robust uplink capacity, adding a critical new layer to today’s radio-based networks. Additionally, a reconfigurable network architecture is essential to transmit traffic data across multiple nodes, covering large areas to maximise benefits. Such a network could enhance urban mobility and reduce traffic-related issues across cities by enabling large-scale traffic flow optimisation.