6G-NTN

The use case considers a fully autonomous UAV to monitor the safety, reliability, and integrity of wires, electrical substations, and other power generation assets. The UAV operates Beyond the Visual Line of Sight, i.e. it is controlled from a remote control centre instead of an on-site pilot and transmits the captured images and videos to a cloud for (near) real-time analysis and decision-making. However, the Terrestrial Network (TN) infrastructure rarely matches the power grid distribution and service continuity should then be offered through other types of networks, in particular Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN). The seamless and lossless transition (or handover) from TN to NTN is investigated in this project. In particular, two scenarios are considered: one for routine inspection and one for manual inspection, in case an anomaly is detected. Other UC enablers are as follows: low latency and high throughput capabilities of next-generation TN / NTN,  compact terminals to be mounted on drones, reliable positioning to offer higher resilience with respect to drone navigation, and flexible orchestration of edge computing components for data processing offloading.