A Secure and Resilient 6G Architecture Vision of the German Flagship Project 6G-ANNA

The 6th generation of wireless mobile networks is emerging as a paradigm shifting successor to unifying the experience across the physical, digital, and human worlds, pushing boundaries on performance in capacity, throughput, latency, scalability, flexibility, and reliability, while prominently addressing new major factors, including sustainability, security and privacy, as well as digital inclusion. Many research institutions and initiatives worldwide have started investigations to make 6G a reality by approximately 2030. In Germany, federal funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) supports a large-scale 6G initiative, with its lighthouse project, called 6G-ANNA. The core aim of this project is to develop the key aspects of a holistic, sustainable, secure, and resilient 6G system design that will simplify and improve the interaction between humans, digital assets, and the physical environment. This paper shares the vision of the project’s main technical working areas and advances, spanning topics from radio access, integration of multiple networks, as well as automation and simplification in networking to new applications and testbed scenarios, including real-time digital twins and extended reality. The industrial impact and relevance of standardization makes 6G-ANNA uniquely positioned to lead and realize the vision of next-generation wireless mobile network technologies, systems, and applications.