Connectivity: towards smarter, distributed networks

Connectivity, supercharged by today’s 5G and tomorrow’s 6G, is set to transform our society. Between challenges and opportunities, the future is taking shape around smart, connected solutions that integrate distributed and autonomous systems.

Connectivity has become one of the main drivers of digital transformation worldwide. With 5G and the emergence of 6G, advanced technologies are supporting this transformation across numerous sectors, paving the way for innovative services tailored to an increasingly connected world. But what does this hyper-connected future hold? What challenges and opportunities lie ahead in this race towards ultra-connectivity?

Balancing performance demands, automation, and sustainability

Why all the buzz around 5G, 6G, and next-gen mobile networks? Simple — they’re the backbone of our future digital world. As digitalization explodes and data generation skyrockets, connectivity is under pressure to evolve. Tomorrow’s networks will need to be faster, more reliable, and ubiquitous — powering everything from autonomous vehicles to AI-driven services, which rely on real-time responses and seamless automation.

But this rapid evolution isn’t without hurdles. As people become more mobile, we need to ensure strong, reliable coverage, even in the most remote areas. Then there’s the energy demand — building and maintaining high-speed networks takes an enormous amount of power, sparking urgent questions about sustainability. The answer lies in smart, energy-efficient deployments that can keep up with demand while cutting back on environmental impact.

The new generation of networks: flexibility, speed, and AI

To tackle today’s connectivity challenges, it’s clear that we need more than just incremental upgrades. The next generation of networks needs to incorporate greater intelligence, while also rethinking our approach to connectivity. With an ever-growing number of users and devices, traditional models simply won’t cut it. What we need now are adaptive, dynamic architectures that push the boundaries of what’s possible. By pushing intelligence and resources to the edge of the network, closer to the user, we can unlock massive performance gains, reduce latency to near-zero, and deliver real-time response times crucial for applications like autonomous vehicles and augmented reality.

While this approach is technically ambitious, it’s the key to making tomorrow’s networks faster, smarter, and more responsive. It requires sophisticated orchestration to manage a distributed network made up of diverse nodes, ensuring everything works in harmony. In this context, a “mobile-edge-cloud continuum” could enable seamless, intelligent allocation of resources and computational tasks across devices, edge nodes, and cloud infrastructure, dynamically adapting to meet the specific demands of users and applications.

Advanced concepts are being developed to bring this vision to life, where network elements can intelligently self-organise and adapt to user needs. Decentralised decision-making within the network eases the load on core infrastructures and accelerates the processing of critical data. In this approach, each network element contributes to an adaptive and responsive intelligence. These more flexible networks can address diverse needs, from emergency services to entertainment. This vision outlines a future where networks will be not only connected but also intelligent and adaptive.

LIST: A catalyst for innovation in intelligent connectivity

In Luxembourg, research and innovation leaders like the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) are at the forefront of connectivity breakthroughs. By teaming up with industry giants such as Orange, Proximus, and POST, LIST is pioneering the next wave of connectivity solutions. As a case in point, LIST won four of the seven projects selected as part of the joint call for projects for ‘5G communication technologies’, a landmark result in this initiative launched in 2023 by several public and private players, aimed at stimulating innovation and collaboration on 5G in strategic areas such as Smart Cities, Industry 4.0 and Smart Environments.

“We're driving applied projects that are already showing real progress in 5G, while also delving into the theoretical potential of 6G, the next frontier in smart, interconnected networks," says Dr. Sébastien Faye, 6G Technology & Innovation Line Manager at LIST. This dual strategy — combining hands-on applications with cutting-edge research — enables LIST to address current industry needs while anticipating the challenges of tomorrow.

In 2025, several high-impact initiatives will bolster LIST’s strategic positioning and push the boundaries of intelligent networks. One such project, 5G-META, in partnership with Proximus, will develop cognitive networks that can self-assess and adapt in real time. With a focus on autonomy and flexibility, 5G-META is set to build dynamic, intelligent networks crucial for applications requiring rapid adaptability.

Meanwhile, the 5G-CriCo project, in collaboration with POST, targets critical services to ensure top-tier performance for security and emergency applications. By providing a robust and responsive network infrastructure, 5G-CriCo guarantees the continuity and safety needed in sensitive environments.

A third initiative to be announced in Q1 2025, based at the Belval campus, will explore the decentralization of communications, pushing computing resources closer to users through network edge nodes. This will drastically cut down latency and optimize performance for data-heavy applications.

These projects complement larger initiatives at LIST. Among them, 6G-TWIN, funded by the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking under the Horizon Europe programme, which investigates future network architectures, and OPTIWAVE and COMBO, supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR), which focus on real-world use cases and deployment challenges. In addition to the digital field, there are also other initiatives in the materials or environmental fields.

Together, they position LIST as a leader in connectivity innovation, seamlessly blending tangible 5G progress with forward-thinking 6G research. The goal is clear: to create a future where connectivity is not only everywhere but also intelligent and sustainable — meeting the evolving needs of society.