Empowering the Convergence of Wi-Fi and 5G for Future Private 6G Networks

Inhalt:
Private Cellular networks are heavily discussed as one of the core innovations of current 5G and future 6G networks. However, in most potential deployment areas, future private cellular networks are competing with existing radio technologies, most of which are operated in unlicensed frequency bands, such as industrial Wi-Fi solutions. In contrast to these, private cellular networks are promising a more robust and reliable alternative due to its centralized resource management and the use of licensed, dedicated frequency ranges. While today, Wi-Fi and 5G are bound to certain frequency ranges, in this paper, we aim to demonstrate the feasibility of combining both Wi-Fi and 5G for future private networks. In this work, we leverage the open-source Wi-Fi stack OpenWiFi to enable Wi- Fi operation in exclusively licensed frequency ranges at 3,7 GHz to exclude interference of other Wi-Fi systems. First, we show with experiments that an unmanaged operation of Wi- Fi and private 5G within the same band severely degrades the Wi-Fi systems performance. Thus, we propose and implement a Multi-RAT broker to manage a cooperative and reliable operation of both technologies towards heterogeneous private 6G networks. The Multi-RAT broker controls resource allocation in the time and frequency domains for both technologies based on technology, channel and application knowledge. An experimental study combining robots equipped either with 5G or Wi-Fi finally shows that the proposed Multi-RAT broker supports dynamic network reconfiguration as well as configuration of bandwidths and frequency ranges at runtime to serve different applications without compromising system functionality.