Objectives – SAFE-6G

The SAFE-6G vision

The evolving landscape of network architectures, driven by the user-centric approach of 6G, stands as a paradigm shift from operator-centric strategies of previous generations. In response to the limitations posed by monolithic network entities, such as mobility management entities (MMEs) in 4G and access management functions (AMFs) in 5G, the 6G architecture is envisioned to empower users with unprecedented control over network services. This shift entails the separation of the network into user service nodes (USN) and network service nodes (NSN), fostering collaborative sensing and distributed learning.

A distributed and adaptable cloud continuum closer to users promises efficiency and flexibility, enabling the creation, scaling, and movement of services across diverse cloud environments.However, this user-centric evolution introduces complex security challenges. The disaggregated cloud continuum, softwarization, and diverse hardware and software stacks across locations necessitate a fundamental rethink of trust and security. Unlike the centralized trust connections in 5G, the 6G ecosystem requires a broader framework of trustworthiness, encompassing safety, security, privacy, resilience, and reliability.

Recognizing that security measures come at a cost to usability and agility, the proposed trustworthiness framework aims for a balanced approach, emphasizing a security-by-design methodology and leveraging cognitive coordination technologies, including Intent-based trustworthiness driven by AI and ML techniques. This comprehensive approach is critical for establishing a resilient and trustworthy 6G system, ensuring the responsible evolution of network architectures.

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Objective #1

Establish the 6G trustworthiness requirements considering the various risks of a human- centric 6G ecosystem (safety, security, privacy, resilience, reliability) in order to design, build and release a zero-touch holistic E2E cognitive trustworthiness framework for user-centric distributed 6G architectures over the (far) edge-cloud continuum, capable of enabling and supporting the deployment of trusted instances/slices of the user/human centric 6G system driven by the user’s intent and utilizing distributed AI/ML techniques across the entire ecosystem.

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Objective #2

Design, implementation and evaluation of a cognitive coordination framework of the distributed FL-driven (X)AI techniques that realise the level of trust (LoT) at each user-centric 6G System instance both for the USN and NSN planes across the edge-cloud continuum, together with an MLOps training framework that continuously assesses and optimises the distributed AI/ML models.

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Objective #3

Design and development of the five AI-assisted user-centric functions (safety, security, privacy, resilience and reliability) that altogether in a zero-trust approach and under cognitive coordination realize the native trustworthiness of a user-centric distributed 6G ecosystem. The functions will consider all the lifecycle phases of the USN and NSN functions, i.e. a) before service deployment, b) during service deployment (operation), c) after service deployment (decommitment), establishing an elastic and scalable trustworthiness regime.

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Objective #4

The cloud-native paradigm over the edge-cloud continuum will be followed for the whole design and development of the whole SAFE-6G framework components and the user-centric distributed 5G/6G core network over the edge cloud continuum. Moreover, compatibility with currently developing edge- cloud continuum MetaOS, such as the one of aerOS Horizon Europe project, will be pursued, reassuring interoperability, compatibility and sustainability of the proposed SAFE-6G framework in future deployments.

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Objective #5

Verifying and validating the proposed SAFE-6G framework using two Metaverse-based pilots, where the immersive-applications will be tested considering different 6G system setups, different service flavors and deployments, under various threats and attacks, setting different trust levels as defined by user-requirements, verifying a number of different AI/ML methods, as well as the cognitive coordinator performance.

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Objective #6

Maximization of impact and adoption of SAFE-6G results through wide dissemination, communication, capacity building, standardisation and exploitation measures, as well as successful demonstration of the proof-of-concept system to relevant stakeholders, including industry partners and regulatory bodies.