Gerhard Fettweis

Title: Unlocking the Potential of 6G: Trustworthy Robotics and Ultra-Efficient GearboxPHY

Abstract:  6G technology will unlock numerous new consumer applications in robotics and extended reality (XR). To achieve this, several challenges must be addressed, with two key issues highlighted here.

Firstly, as we move (remote control) real object by the network this can cause harm in our real world. When interacting with robotic assistants or XR, users must be able to trust them as much as, if not more than, they trust human interactions. Actually, they should be trusted even more for good reasons. How can we learn from human interaction to build a model for trustworthiness and trust? We must develop a model for trust based on human interactions. Trustworthiness has been standardized as the ability of defined characteristics to meet stakeholders’ expectations in a verifiable way (ISO/IEC TS 5723:2022). This is just a starting point; the challenge lies in incorporating this into a decision-making model. By taking initial characteristics into consideration, we have designed platform chips that show very promising cost-benefit results.

Secondly, 6G must be able to leapfrog to a new level of energy efficiency in the radio access network. With anticipated data rate increases of 100x, we need far more than 100x improvement in energy per bit.  We previously proposed the GearboxPHY to address this challenge. Now, with detailed models of the entire transceiver chain, the full potential of this approach is clear, and the projected silicon cost overhead is minimal. And, the silicon cost overhead projection is minimal.

In combination of addressing trustworthiness and sustainability with the GearboxPHY we show a path for unravelling a world on consumer Tactile Internet: enabling robotics and XR on a wide scale.
 

Bio: Gerhard Fettweis earned his Ph.D. degree from Aachen University of Technololgy (RWTH) in 1990. From 1990 to 1991, he was Visiting Scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA, developing signal processing innovations for IBM’s disk drive products. From 1991 to 1994, he was a Scientist with TCSI Inc., Berkeley, CA, responsible for signal processor IC development projects for cellular phone chip-sets. Since 1994 he holds the Vodafone Chair at Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. Gerhard Fettweis has co-authored 500 publications and more than 25 patent families. He was TPC Chair of IEEE ICC 2009 (Dresden), and chair of the 2012 Technology Time Machine (TTM) conference. Among receiving other awards, as the Alcatel-Lucent Research Award, he is an IEEE Fellow, a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and a member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering. During his career, Dr. Fettweis has led research on wireless transmission and chip design, helped establish eleven tech start-ups and secured €500 million in funding for projects in broadband wireless, network performance measurement, satellite communications, IoT solutions, and machine vision for manufacturing. Start-ups founded by Dr. Fettweis include: Systemonic (now NXP and ST-NXP Wireless), Radioplan (Actix), Signalion, InCircuit, Dresden Silicon (Signalion), Freedelity, RadioOpt, and Blue Wonder Communications. In his current role of “Vodafone Academic Ambassador”, he assists Vodafone in strategic guidance of international academic research collaborations.