6G Valley Opening Event
On March 31, 2025, the 6G-Valley innovation cluster was officially launched at a kick-off event hosted by FAU and Fraunhofer IIS in Erlangen. The event brought together partners from academia, industry, and government to showcase early contributions to pave the way to 6G, the next generation of mobile networks. IDC actively
participated by presenting two research posters.
IDC researchers Hedieh Ajam and Dr. Vasilis Papanikolaou, together with LHFT researcher, Andreas Rittler, introduced the concept of optical reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (ORIS) as a means to enhance free-space optical (FSO) communication. ORIS can dynamically steer and shape light beams, helping to improve signal robustness and enable new functionalities in optical links.
A second demonstrator was presented by Moritz Garkisch, in collaboration with André Scheder from LHFT and Xianshi Zeng from LITES. They presented the prototype of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) together with two posters that planned the concept for the control hardware, as well as a user tracking algorithm.
IDC’s contributions reflect its ongoing efforts to advance core technologies for next-generation communication systems.