Significant grant awarded to 6G-NTN communication project
2025-01-17The project “Foundational Algorithms, Protocols, and Systems for Multi-Tier 6G-Non-Terrestrial Networks Integrated Communication and Environmental Sensing (6G-NTN-E),” has been awarded a grant of 28 MSEK by the Swedish Research Council.
The grant extends over a four-year period and is part of the Swedish Research Council's call for grants to support research environments focused on sixth generation wireless systems (6G). This call is part of the Government's initiative to develop the next generation of wireless systems (6G) and aims to support build-up of strong research environments, where teams of researchers work towards a joint research goal, both nationally and bi- or multilateral collaborations.
The project focuses on creating integrated terrestrial (TN) and non-terrestrial networks (NTN) for future mobile systems. By combining satellite communications and high-altitude platforms with terrestrial networks, the project aims to enhance internet accessibility, especially in remote areas, minimizing the need for costly terrestrial infrastructure. It also seeks to create energy-efficient TN-NTN systems to ensure sustainable mobile networks. Additionally, the research explores how satellites can be used not only for communications, but also for environmental monitoring and collecting global data on the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and land, enabling studies on climate change, deforestation, and rapid environmental events like floods.
”The use of non-terrestrial networks has great potential for connecting the next billion users to the Internet, but also brings many challenges for the architectures and protocols involved. From Karlstad University, we will contribute research on intelligent resource allocation methods and enhanced network protocols. I am very excited to contribute our strong expertise from the networking domain into the excellent multidisciplinary research team of 6G-NTN-E and very much look forward to the collaboration”, says Anna Brunström, Professor in Computer Science, Karlstad University
6G-NTN-E unites a multidisciplinary team of leading researchers in signal processing, NTN architectures, network protocols, antenna design, optical systems, and Earth observation to address those challenges. Researchers from Karlstad University are participating as well as researchers from Chalmers University and Carleton University in Canada.

