The 6G race is on
As 5G rolls out around the world, work has already begun on the next generation of the wireless standard. A US industry trade organization composed of leading telecommunications service providers and suppliers, 5G Americas, has come together to work on the evolution of the 5G standard. 5G Americas recently released their vision paper, “Mobile Communications Towards 2030”, parts of which I worked on representing Nokia.
This research work into 6G may seem early to some of you, especially given that only the most recent mid-level and high-end smartphones support 5G. Globally, however, there are already many projects working in the 6G space. There are major consortiums in Europe and Asia specifically addressing the new standard, for example. In addition, there are also various vertical-oriented working groups addressing aspects such as vehicle connectivity and private industrial networks.
To date, 6G research in the US has mostly been carried out by academics with additional efforts by government and standards bodies. The National Science Foundation (NSF), for instance, supports several research streams focused on wireless communications such as RINGS (Resilient and Intelligent NextG Systems) and the Spectrum Innovation Initiative.
The Next G Alliance was formed by the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Standards in late 2020, and Nokia is one of the founding members. Its goal is to influence the work being done by the government and academic community with an eye to commercial applications. While absolutely committed to a global standard, the Next G Alliance is also focused on ensuring North American leadership in the development of 6G.
Other countries and regions have launched similar initiatives. China led off in late 2019 with the establishment of two working groups. Japan launched its own initiative in early 2020. In early 2021, the EU launched the flagship Hexa-X research project within the larger Horizon2020 public-private partnership, for which Nokia is the overall project lead. It includes key industry players and major service providers and research institutes. There are also national level initiatives from Finland working in collaboration with Korea, which has several 6G initiatives underway. Other countries with notable 6G initiatives include Germany and India.
5G Americas 2030 vision
The vision paper sees several key use cases influencing the evolution of 5G. Some of these use cases can be addressed today by 5G and later by 5G-Advanced, but they will demand new capabilities as they evolve. Others will require a radical rethinking of current technologies. The use cases include multi-sensory telepresence and immersion, or XR, which is an extension of augmented, mixed and virtual realities (AR, MR, VR). XR will more fully engage all five senses, for instance, using tactile and brain-computer interactions.
Industry 4.0 use cases will evolve to become more demanding. Digital twins technology is expected to move beyond simple industrial automation to more fine-grained models that analyze data input from enormous numbers of sensors requiring extreme data rates and embedded network processing. Also considered were evolutions to the standard that would be required by vertical use cases in areas such as smart agriculture, autonomous transportation, remote healthcare, military and first responder applications.
Depending on the specific needs of each use case, evolutions from the current 5G standard to 6G could include much higher data rates, wider coverage, enhanced reliability, high density endpoints (up to 10 million devices per square km), synchronization of multiple flows, even more time-sensitive operations, precise location tracking and ever-lower energy use. 6G networks will need to support trillions of devices that are embedded in every part of our lives, even our bodies. This means they must be highly reliable and trustworthy.
To make the complexity of these systems manageable, networks will have to become more intelligent. AI and machine learning will have to move beyond black box configurations to provide trusted, interpretable and explainable decision-making processes. Applications and networks will need to collaborate intelligently to ensure that network resources match application requirements.
At Nokia Bell Labs, we presently have six areas of research around 6G — new spectrum technologies, AI native air interface, network as a sensor, extreme connectivity, cognitive, automated and specialized architectures, and security and trust. Three of these areas are emphasized in the paper. The first is network-based sensing. The use of mmWave and THz spectrum will open bandwidth for more than transferring data. It will make fine-grained sensing a possibility for RADAR as well as other applications such as the sensing of electromagnetic absorption in gases, which will have applications, for instance, in identifying environmental contamination.
We also see the network becoming more disaggregated, with the extension of cloud-native architectures beyond the core to encompass the RAN. Evolving from today’s edge clouds, a universal network compute fabric will handle massive amounts of data, provide extremely low latency and ease programmability and operation within a continuum of execution environments, from devices to the network edge to local and central data centers.
The third area we highlighted in the paper is in 6G sub-networks. We anticipate the emergence of millions of sub-networks that are connected to the 6G network but can also operate ‘off-line’ if they lose connectivity. They are a class of applications that need to meet certain parameters, for instance, a network of health-related implants, such as pacemakers, cochlear implants, insulin pumps and drug delivery systems require extreme reliability. Sub-networks can be in-body, but also in-robot or in-car. They can be on-premises or federated across the wide area. They will be connected to the 6G network through a 6G access point, but can operate autonomously in terms of data rate, reliability, latency, availability, and security.
When I look around the world at the early efforts to define the next-G standard, it seems to me that in the US, service providers and vendors are playing the primary role in defining and delivering the next-generation network. They are, of course, important players in the evolution of the industry. At the same time, during the early stage of defining requirements, we should also have representation from verticals and other players such as webscalers who will play an essential role in implementing and integrating 6G in novel use cases.
It is always exciting to look to the future and imagine new possibilities. The world is more and more reliant on networks to power our smart infrastructure. This means that the demands on the network are evolving, and the problems raised, from security to climate change, will require industry, academia and governments to collaborate closely. The 5G Americas 2030 vision paper is an important first step.
