Ericsson has announced the launch of its ‘India 6G’ program with the formation of an India 6G research team in its Chennai R&D Center. Ericsson has three R&D centers in India: in Chennai, Bengaluru and Gurgaon. This ‘India 6G’ team comprises senior research leaders and a team of experienced researchers across radio, networks, AI and the cloud who have been entrusted with developing fundamental solutions for the future of telecommunications.
Together with Ericsson research teams in Sweden and the US, the India Research team will work collaboratively to develop the technology that will help deliver a cyber-physical continuum where networks will deliver critical services, immersive communications, and omnipresent IoT while ensuring the integrity of the delivered information. The 6G research team in India will develop novel solutions in collaboration with Ericsson Global Research teams. Some of the projects where the teams will be working include channel modeling and hybrid beamforming, low-energy networks, cloud evolution and sustainable compute, trustworthy, Explainable and bias-free AI algorithms, autonomous agents for intent management functions, integrated sensing and communication functions for the man-machine continuum and compute offload to the edge computing cloud, amongst others.
“By establishing a dedicated 6G research team for in-country research contextual to India’s needs and collaborating with world-class research programs across international research labs, we look forward to incorporating the needs of India into the mainstream of telecommunication technology evolution," states Magnus Frodigh, Head of Research at Ericsson.
Ericsson is partnering with premier institutes in India for radio, AI and cloud research, the most recent being a 5-year partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras’ (IIT Madras) Centre for Responsible AI (CeRAI) that was signed in September 2023. The Centre for Responsible AI is an interdisciplinary research center that envisions becoming a premier research center for both fundamental and applied research in Responsible AI with an immediate impact on deploying AI systems in the Indian ecosystem. AI research is of high importance to Ericsson, as the 6G networks would be autonomously driven by AI algorithms. Ericsson is also looking to partner with other premier engineering institutes in India for 6G-related research.
Ericsson has been present in India since 1903 and the Ericsson Research Team was established in 2010. With the establishment of 6G Research in India, Ericsson looks forward to playing a pivotal role in enabling India to be at the forefront of future communication technology.
Ericsson envisions a 6G network platform that connects humans and machines and is able to fully merge the physical and digital worlds to allow seamless interaction and immersive experiences. “Our views on 6G are aligned with the views of ubiquitous connectivity, sustainable networks and affordable communications in the Bharat 6G vision statement of the Government of India," states Nitin Bansal, Head of Ericsson India. Based on the work being done by Indian researchers and the global teams, Ericsson in India is well poised to usher in the “India 6G” era in collaboration with the government, universities and the industry ecosystem in India.
Ericsson is a global 5G leader and powers 155 live 5G networks across 66 countries globally. Ericsson’s 5G leadership has been recognized by important independent analyst reports: Gartner 5G Magic Quadrant 2023 (third year in a row) and Frost Radar Global 5G Infrastructure. Ericsson also scored the number one position in the latest ABI Research report on telco vendor sustainability. In India, Ericsson is partnering with leading communications service providers, Bharti Airtel and Rjio, to deploy 5G in the country.
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