Coverage Extension as a Service for Flexible 6G Networks Infrastructure

In future 6G wireless networks, it is important to ensure that equal opportunity is offered to citizens and businesses regardless of location with a dynamic and efficient expansion of the infrastructure. Dynamic coverage and connectivity extension mechanisms exploiting multiple types of Mobile Access Points (MAPs) during a short amount of time for covering areas that cannot be easily reached, are developed by DEDICAT 6G project. This service is called Coverage Extension as a Service (CEaaS). This paper proposes a system architecture for CEaaS and the functionalities that the DEDICAT 6G platform will offer. This includes context awareness (i.e. knowledge about users and technology recognition), coverage extension decision making (i.e. MAP and swarm operation) and network operation decision making (i.e. MAP-user association and radio access technology selection). Furthermore, performance results of DEDICAT 6G framework for CEaaS are presented.