On March 26th, 2025, a group of 11UK University labs will demonstrate a range of 6G use cases and enabling technology.
The demos will show how spectrum across multiple legacy and future access networks – WiFi, non-terrestrial, THz, optical wireless and cellular – can be managed by a common controller. There will be a focus on applications such as Integrated Communications and Sensing and holographic communication, and future network technology directions such as Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces and the integration of AI into networks to create intelligent networks end-to-end.
This may, to those in this end of the industry, sound like a standard list of 6G and future network research directions – advanced as they are. But there will be something different about the March 26th demos – they will have been developed by teams utilising a brand new, end-to-end shared communications, cloud and edge compute infrastructure known as JOINER.
JOINER was established in early 2024 and is part of the UK’s Wireless Infrastructure Strategy that was announced in 2023 with a £100 million funding pledge. £70 million of that has now been awarded – with the biggest part of the budget going to three future telecom federated hubs. These are clusters of universities that are working on areas such as the control of a network of networks, future spectrum strategy and the compute continuum. (The projects are known as CHEDDAR, HASC and TITAN).
But creating the clusters themselves threw up a further question – why not join them up so that the research products can be tested and tried in an end-to-end network?
Professor Dimitra Simeonidou: “We are going to have a national lab that will allow us actually to do system level research, which we cannot do up to now.”
Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, who leads the JOINER project and is already well-known in UK circles for her work at Bristol University, tells TMN, “We made a very big case that quite a lot of what we are looking at with future networks has to do with heterogeneity, scale and the addressing complexity or co-ordinating of legacy with emerging technologies.
“What we need in the UK is a platform that looks very much like a representative network which can host and demonstrate the research that comes out of the hubs. This platform should be addressing those end-to-end questions.”
And so JOINER was born. Over the next few weeks 11 locations (Belfast, Bristol, Cambridge, Cranfield, Glasgow, Leeds, three in London, Oxford, Southampton) will be connected to JOINER, which is formed of a number of capabilities and functionalities.
These are:
- 10-100Gbps (depending on requirements) Layer 2 connectivity (provided by university infrastructure provider JISC)
- Dark fibre connecting Bristol, UCL, Southampton and Cambridge – to support work on bringing quantum services into classical networks
- A mix of satellite connections – currently LEO links from Starlink and OneWeb, with in the future MEO and GEO connectivity options – to enable work on different resilience scenarios, as well as on base station satellite development
- As well as network connectivity, JOINER is building out a cloud fabric, providing virtual infrastructure to host shared functionality – for example a cloud-native mobile packet core and AI models. JOINER is working with AWS on cloud hosting
- It is also working with VMWare and Weaver Labs to develop an open source hypervisor which will enable researchers to carry out their own research into cloud technologies, such as disaggregation and distributed architectures
- The sites themselves will also be equipped with a rack of terminal equipment providing cross layer switching and programmable platforms like FPGAs for researchers to work on network programmability. These platforms will also incorporate cloud edge functionality
- JOINER is also providing a control platform, using Bristol University’s MATRIC (Multi Access Radio Intelligent Controller) to be able to control the different flavours of 6G access that labs are going to be developing
- Lastly is JOINER Brain – a shared measuring and analytics platform to enable things such as calculation of energy efficiency across multi-access networks end-to-end, or access to spectrum data
Simeonidou says that all of this creates something quite different to the previous 5G Test Beds & Trials Programme. Participants have been chosen to avoid areas of over-lapping research.
“5G Test Beds & Trials brought a lot of benefit but a lot of waste as well at the same time. We are starting with a joined up infrastructure that is going to give key functions to everybody, to share.”
For example, researchers working on optical wireless can develop collaborative use cases with someone working on new radio.
“JOINER is a scientific instrument in its own right, because once we put this test bed together we are going to be able to explore and answer system-level questions. We are going to have a national lab that will allow us actually to do system level research, which we cannot do up to now.”
She identifies, as an example, analysis of energy consumption at the system level, managing both physical infrastructure but also software layers for AI running across the system .
“Another question could be getting some idea about global spectrum management and brokering. Or how to optimise AI tools end-to-end in multi-technology, multi-layer systems.”
Although there are other research networks, Simeonidou says that there’s nothing quite like JOINER currently, that she knows of. Japan has the IOWN project – which focusses on photonics networks. The USA has the NSF Research Infrastructure that has been more focussed on traditional sciences and is beginning to think about 5G and 6G research (JOINER is already connected to the NRI).
Meanwhile, the next call from Europe’s SNS JU is set to incorporate a framework for a collaborative testbed, similar in concept to JOINER.
“Having had experience of building this in UK, we’d like to support them,” Simeonidou adds.
Commercialisation
But what of turning lab research into technology and capabilities that can meaningfully impact on industry, and the way we live our lives?
Simeonidou says that the main motivation for having a platform like this early on is to help and support the translation from the university labs to something that has a higher TRL (Technology Readiness Level).
“Once you start putting these prototypes into a test bed, and start addressing integration and interoperability issues, then you actually know your TRL. This is quite important for us because we are changing culture, thinking about the viability and the opportunity to commercialise, gather the evidence to file patents, push things into pre-standards like ETSI Working Groups.
“I also believe a platform like this will help much more industry-academia collaboration, to push towards commercialisation. The platform could be a very important translational instrument.”
Those involved in JOINER have until the end of March 2025 to show their working. After that – although there are no current budget commitments it would be seem strange to withdraw funding.
“I have a lot of hope that what we’re creating is quite compelling. We are actually pioneering a national platform, to the degree that we now have funding from NSF establishing a transatlantic link connecting the networking environment in the US with JOINER. So things are happening and they are accelerating. I personally would wouldn’t even like to think that at the end of March 25 the funding is going to dry and all this is not going to be exist anymore. It doesn’t make sense.”
