Demo: Toward Multi-Connectivity 6G IoT - Practical IoT Device-to-Core Integration
Quang Quoc Ngo, Kalle Ruttik, Dang Yongchao, Jantti Riku, Jose Costa‐Requena · 2025
The emerging 6G vision aims to enable massive IoT deployments, multi-connectivity, and heterogeneous networks while ensuring ultra-reliable low-latency communications, robust security, and intelligent network orchestration. Current approaches to IoT connectivity remain fragmented and isolated, lacking seamless interoperability and exposing gaps in end-to-end security. To address these gaps, we present a lightweight implementation for direct authentication and registration of IoT UEs with a commercial 5G Core (5GC) using Raspberry Pi 5 devices over Wi-Fi, enabling 5G-AKA authentication and secured NAS channel. Our implementation aims to provide a ready-to-use solution that can expand to other wireless standards, aligning with the 6G vision and emerging IoT standards such as DECT NR+. By offloading authentication, session management, and traffic control to the 5GC, resource-constrained IoT devices gain access to carrier-grade security and efficient traffic handling. Furthermore, we demonstrate a secured data-plane setup in which WireGuard configuration is exchanged between two UEs through the gNB, establishing an encrypted VPN tunnel. Validation through Wireshark captures and the 5GC GUI confirms compliance with 3 GPP specifications. This work provides a practical step toward 6G IoT integration, offering a scalable, secure, and multi-connectivity-ready solution for industrial and enterprise deployments.