EAGER: A Roadmap for research towards verification of NextG technologies

The next generation of cellular technology (NextG) is about to revolutionize communication as we know it. These new technologies will offer cellular communication faster, more reliable, with lower latency, more energy- and spectral- efficient, higher mobility, and denser connectivity than 5G. It will enable applications such as real-time remote healthcare, intelligent industrial automation, high-performance precision agriculture, autonomous vehicles, smart infrastructures, holographic communication, and space communication, and continue to impact each of the sixteen critical infrastructures.

The goal of the proposed work is to create a roadmap that prioritizes research pertaining to NextG technologies. It emphasizes issues of correctness, security, and privacy as relating to NextG technologies, viewing correctness as a precondition for security, and security as a precondition for privacy. The project will identify what research is needed to ensure that these networks are trustworthy and offer a high degree of security and privacy for users.

Most of the ongoing research studying NextG technologies is done by the networking community and has been primarily focused on performance. Solving the trust, security, and privacy research challenges posed by the NextG ecosystem requires expertise from several research communities such as networking, security, privacy, machine learning, programming languages, software engineering, and a strategic approach to engage them in working towards a common vision.

The project will analyze the existing literature and studies on the topic, keeping in mind the Government’s priorities on NextG research, and engage in discussions with relevant academic, government, and industry experts. If need be, some relevant workshops will be held. The envisioned roadmap will be the conclusions obtained from these studies and discussions and will craft the research agenda for NSF programs, as well as other government research programs and researchers, that will seamlessly incorporate NextG into everyday life.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.