Ensuring a safer and connected world with the power of mind and machine

Artificial intelligence (AI) began to reach a wider audience after the release of ChatGPT. The generative AI tool was reportedly accessed one million times within a week of its official launch in November 2022. Just three months later, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, reported having 100 million active users.

The great interest in AI we are currently witnessing is not limited to just curious people and technophiles. Politics and business are also taking an active role. For example, governments are drafting legal frameworks while companies are investing in AI startups and looking for ways to use this technology in their own businesses.

The power of innovation in our own AI incubation lab

In Germany, one out of eight companies is already using artificial intelligence. "AI and machine learning have huge potential," says Dr. Andrew Schaefer, Technology Coordinator (AI) at Rohde & Schwarz. In the Technology Incubation department, he is responsible for the AI incubation lab the company founded several years ago. "AI is opening up exciting new capabilities and opportunities for us that we need to understand and become proficient in. By taking advantage of our innovative spirit, we hope to generate optimal added value for our partners and customers."

Rohde & Schwarz ranks as one of Germany’s most innovative companies. The lab is making a major contribution to the group's innovativeness. Schaefer continued as follows: "We are involved in projects from various parts of the company. This helps us to see the big picture. At the same time, we can maintain an active dialog with AI experts from other divisions. Thanks to this close cooperation as well as our critical mass of expertise, Rohde & Schwarz has a very positive catalyst effect."

Mobile communications – foundation, catalyzer, trailblazer

Research into 6G is already underway. This is creating another tailwind for artificial intelligence since AI can help transmit data more efficiently. Simply stated, the objective of 6G is to achieve even higher data rates and lower latency – anytime and anywhere. This advance will play a critical role in applications such as eXtended Reality (XR), autonomous driving and smart factories. What's more, entirely new application fields will evolve around AI based applications and services.

Mobile communications is not only a trailblazer and a catalyst, but also serves as a foundation for AI applications. If AI is deployed on a large scale in 6G in the near future, it will also be because the development process can build upon experience gained with previous generations of mobile technology. As a longstanding partner to the mobile communications industry, Rohde & Schwarz is actively supporting 6G research in Europe, Asia and the USA. The company has also been involved in various R&D projects and industry alliances for many years. Close cooperation with leading research institutes and universities across the globe is a key element of the company's strategy. T&M expertise and solutions from Rohde & Schwarz are helping to pave the way towards the next generation of mobile communications.

Jointly pursuing the next advance in neural technology

The commercial introduction of 6G is projected for the year 2030. Research is well underway. In this context, Rohde & Schwarz and NVIDIA have already presented some initial results demonstrating how AI can be used in mobile communications. Based on what is known as a neural receiver, digital signal processing on the physical layer is no longer handled using classic signal processing blocks. Instead, trained machine learning models are deployed – a key step in mobile communications.

The neural receiver was developed with the aid of NVIDIA’s Sionna^TM open-source library, which was specially created for 5G and 6G research. High-end Rohde & Schwarz test solutions for signal generation and analysis are being used in this joint project to test the neural receiver performance and to confirm the simulation results.

The training data is critical

Academia as well as leading research institutes and industry experts across the globe all anticipate that the future 6G standard will use artificial intelligence for signal processing. Andreas Rößler, 6G Technology Manager at Rohde & Schwarz, says: "In principle, one objective of 6G is to replace traditional processing algorithms with a neural receiver – or at least to supplement these algorithms." This should allow more accurate channel estimation and equalization.

"Today's algorithms are based on defined channel models that only represent an instantaneous snapshot of reality. If we can train our new neural receiver concepts with data sets that better reflect real-world propagation conditions, we should be able to gradually achieve a significant improvement over the results of conventional algorithms."

According to Rößler, there is a certain cost associated with the expected performance gain: AI techniques need more computing power. Overall, however, the benefits should outweigh any disadvantages according to our current insights. "Initial results show that our AI-based receiver is more efficient when compared with a possible extension of conventional algorithms. The objective will be to enable local modification of the entire system in order to support further incremental optimization of the results."