About
6G-PATH Platform
A Federated Experimentation Framework for Beyond-5G and Emerging 6G Technologies
The 6G-PATH Platform provides a federated experimentation environment designed to support the validation and development of advanced Beyond-5G and emerging 6G technologies across distributed European testbeds. Developed within the 6G-PATH project, the platform enables researchers, technology providers, and vertical stakeholders to design, deploy, execute, and evaluate innovative services and applications under realistic operational conditions.
As future communication systems evolve towards highly distributed and intelligent infrastructures, experimentation platforms must support complex interactions between cloud, edge, and network resources while enabling flexible orchestration, monitoring, and performance evaluation. The 6G-PATH Platform addresses these challenges through an integrated experimentation framework that combines orchestration services, monitoring and analytics capabilities, and automation mechanisms within a unified environment.
Through its federated architecture, the platform connects heterogeneous infrastructures across multiple European testbeds, enabling scalable experimentation across diverse technological environments and application domains.
Platform Architecture
The 6G-PATH Platform is based on a layered architecture designed to support distributed experimentation across multiple testbeds and infrastructure domains. The framework integrates orchestration services, monitoring tools, analytics pipelines, and shared experimentation services that enable the coordinated deployment and execution of experiments across heterogeneous environments.
The overall architecture of the platform is illustrated in Figure 1 – 6G-PATH experimentation framework, which presents the key functional components of the system and their interactions.
Figure 1 – 6G-PATH experimentation framework
The architecture integrates several functional layers that together enable the full experimentation lifecycle.
Access and Shared Services
The access layer provides experimenters with a unified entry point to the platform through dedicated portals and shared services. These components allow users to define experiments, configure parameters, and manage the lifecycle of experimentation activities.
Shared services coordinate interactions between the different components of the platform, ensuring that experimenters can seamlessly access the available resources and experimentation tools.
Per-Testbed Orchestration
Each participating testbed integrates orchestration capabilities responsible for deploying and managing experiment components within the local infrastructure.
These orchestration mechanisms coordinate the allocation and management of resources required for experiment execution while maintaining compatibility with the specific technologies and infrastructure configurations available at each testbed.
Infrastructure Resources
The infrastructure layer includes the physical and virtual resources that support experimentation activities. These resources may include computing platforms, networking infrastructure, edge and cloud environments, and radio access technologies.
By federating these heterogeneous resources across multiple testbeds, the 6G-PATH Platform enables experimenters to evaluate advanced networking technologies and applications in realistic operational environments.
Monitoring and Analytics
Monitoring and analytics capabilities play a central role in the experimentation framework. These components collect and process data generated during experiment execution, enabling experimenters to evaluate network behaviour, system performance, and experiment outcomes.
The analytics framework supports the validation of key performance indicators (KPIs) and facilitates the analysis of experiment results across the federated platform.
Experimentation Workflow
The 6G-PATH Platform supports the complete lifecycle of experimentation activities, enabling experimenters to design, deploy, execute, and evaluate experiments in a structured and reproducible manner.
Experiments are first defined by specifying their objectives, configuration parameters, and performance metrics. Once defined, experiment components are deployed across the relevant testbeds using orchestration mechanisms that coordinate infrastructure resources.
During experiment execution, monitoring services collect operational data related to network behaviour, service performance, and infrastructure utilisation. This information is processed through the platform’s analytics framework, allowing experimenters to evaluate experiment outcomes and assess whether the targeted performance indicators have been achieved.
This structured experimentation workflow ensures that experiments can be executed consistently across different infrastructures while supporting systematic evaluation of innovative networking solutions.
Experimentation Methodology
To support consistent experimentation across multiple testbeds, the 6G-PATH Platform follows a structured methodology based on reusable templates that guide the definition and evaluation of experiments. These templates include:
Test Case Templates
Defining the objectives, configuration parameters, and KPIs associated with each experiment.
Scenario Templates
Describing the operational conditions and infrastructure configurations required for experiment execution.
Results Templates
Providing a structured framework for documenting experiment outcomes and analysing collected data.
This template-based approach ensures that experiments can be executed in a reproducible manner while facilitating systematic comparison of results across different experimentation scenarios.
Platform Capabilities
The 6G-PATH Platform provides a comprehensive set of capabilities designed to support advanced experimentation for next-generation communication technologies. Key capabilities include:
Federated experimentation across distributed European testbeds.
End-to-end experiment lifecycle management.
Orchestration of heterogeneous infrastructure resources.
Monitoring and analytics for experiment performance evaluation.
KPI-driven validation of networking technologies.
Support for experimentation across multiple vertical sectors.
Through these capabilities, the platform enables researchers and technology developers to evaluate innovative connectivity solutions and accelerate the development of next-generation services.
Enabling Innovation Across Vertical Domains
The 6G-PATH experimentation framework supports the validation of innovative services and applications across several vertical sectors. These include domains such as smart agriculture, smart cities, healthcare, and industrial systems. By enabling experimentation across diverse infrastructures and application environments, the platform supports collaboration between research institutions, industry stakeholders, and technology providers working towards the development of future 6G-enabled services.
Platform Documentation
The 6G-PATH Platform is supported by comprehensive technical documentation describing its architecture, components, deployment procedures, and experimentation processes.
For a detailed description of the platform and its technical implementation, including the architecture presented in Figure 1 – 6G-PATH experimentation framework, download the complete guide below.