At its GTC conference today, Nvidia announced a 6G Research Cloud that hopes to advance AI for radio access network (RAN) technology.
Partners and first adopters include Ansys, ETH Zurich, Fujitsu, Keysight, Nokia, Northeastern University, Rohde & Schwarz, Samsung, SoftBank, and Viavi.
“The massive increase in connected devices and host of new applications in 6G will require a vast leap in wireless spectral efficiency in radio communications,” Ronnie Vasishta, SVP of telecom at Nvidia, said.
“Key to achieving this will be the use of AI, a software-defined full-RAN reference stack, and next-generation digital twin technology."
The platform features three core components:
1) The Nvidia Aerial Omniverse Digital Twin for 6G: A reference application and developer sample that enables "physically accurate" simulations of complete 6G systems, from a single tower to city scale. It incorporates software-defined RAN and user-equipment simulators, along with "realistic" terrain and object properties.
Nvidia said that using the Omniverse Aerial Digital Twin, researchers will be able to simulate and build base-station algorithms based on site-specific data and to train models in real-time to improve transmission efficiency.
2) The Nvidia Aerial CUDA-Accelerated RAN: A software-defined, full-RAN stack that offers significant flexibility for researchers to customize, program, and test 6G networks in real time.
3) The Nvidia Sionna Neural Radio Framework: A framework that provides seamless integration with popular frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow, leveraging Nvidia GPUs for generating and capturing data and training AI and machine learning models at scale.
This also includes Nvidia Sionna, the leading link-level research tool for AI/ML-based wireless simulations.
“The future convergence of 6G and AI holds the promise of a transformative technological landscape,” said Charlie Zang, SVP of Samsung Research America.
“This will bring seamless connectivity and intelligent systems that will redefine our interactions with the digital world, ushering in an era of unparalleled innovation and connectivity.”
