Knowledge Graph-Based approach for Sustainable 6G End-to-End System Design
This work addresses the need for a systematic method to incorporate sustainability into 6G system design, a problem for the ICT industry facing evolving performance and sustainability targets.
The paper introduces a knowledge graph-based method for designing sustainable 6G end-to-end systems, integrating performance KPIs, sustainability requirements, and technological enablers. Applied to a cooperating mobile robot use case, it selected 82 enablers and demonstrated efficacy through proof-of-concept demonstrations.
Previous generations of cellular communication, such as 5G, have been designed with the objective of improving key performance indicators (KPIs) such as throughput, latency, etc. However, to meet the evolving KPI demands and the ambitious sustainability targets for the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry, 6G will need to be designed differently. 6G will need to consider both the performance and sustainability targets for the various use cases it will serve. In addition, 6G will have various candidate technological enablers, making the design space of the system even more complex. Furthermore, due to the subjective nature of sustainability indicators, especially social sustainability, the literature still lacks clear methods to link them with technical enablers and 6G system design. Hence, in this article a novel method for 6G end-to-end (E2E) system design based on Knowledge graphs (KG) has been introduced. It considers as its input: the use case KPIs, use case sustainability requirements expressed as Key Values (KV) and KV Indicators (KVIs), the ability of the technological enablers to satisfy these KPIs and KVIs, the 6G system design principles defined in Hexa-X-II project, the maturity of a technological enabler and the dependencies between the various enablers. The KG method also introduces a novel approach for determining the key values addressed by a technological enabler. The effectiveness of the KG method was demonstrated by its application in designing the 6G E2E system for the cooperating mobile robot use case defined in the Hexa-X-II project, where 82 enablers were selected. Lastly, results from proof-of-concept demonstrations for a subset of the selected enablers have also been provided, which reinforce the efficacy of the KG method for designing a sustainable 6G system.