Q1/2020 - 2nd 6G Summit

The 2nd 6G Summit scheduled for 17 March 2020 in Lapland was held in form of a virtual meeting. The discussion issue was a 6G White Paper drafted by the Finish University of Oulo in cooperation with the IEEE, which for the first time describes “key drivers, research requirements and challenges”[1]. The White Paper says that 6G will be faster and more secure than 5G and enable a “myriad” of new applications and services. The researchers (6G Flagship Team[2]) expect the technology to be ready for implementation already in 2030. By now there are research centers for instance in Finland, USA, China and Japan. The gold sponsors of the Lapland conference included Nokia Bell Labs, Ericsson, Keysight Technologies and the Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei. Even though the discussion has just started and is focusing mainly on technical issues, it has already reached the political level in the ITU-T. In February 2020, Huawei had presented a White Paper titled “Internet 2030 and Beyond” at a conference of the Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG).

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6G SummitQ1/2020
  1. [1] See: Weissbuch on „KEY DRIVERS AND RESEARCH CHALLENGES FOR 6G UBIQUITOUS WIRELESS INTELLIGENCE“, 6G Research Visions 1, Oulo, September 2019: „Totally new services such as telepresence and mixed reality will be made possible by high resolution imaging and sensing, accurate positioning, wearable displays, mobile robots and drones, specialized processors, and next-generation wireless networks. Current smart phones are likely to be replaced by pervasive XR experiences with lightweight glasses delivering unprecedented resolution, frame rates, and dynamic range. 6G research should look at the problem of transmitting up to 1 Tbps per user. This is possible through the efficient utilization of the spectrum in the THz regime. Extended spectrum towards THz will enable merging communications and new applications such as 3D imaging and sensing. However, new paradigms for transceiver architecture and computing will be needed to achieve these – there are opportunities for semiconductors, optics and new materials in THz applications to mention a few. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will play a major role both in link and system-level solutions of 6G wireless networks. New access methods will be needed for truly massive machine-type communications. Modulation and duplexing schemes beyond Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) must be developed and possibly it is time to start looking at analogue types of modulation at THz frequencies. Security at all levels of future systems will be much more critical in the future and 6G needs a network with embedded trust. The strongest security protection may be achieved in the physical layer. During the 6G era it will be possible to create data markets, and thus, privacy protection is one key enabler for future services and applications. 6G is not only about moving data around – it will become a framework of services, including communication services where all user-specific computation and intelligence may move to the edge cloud. The integration of sensing, imaging and highly accurate positioning capabilities with mobility will open a myriad of new applications in 6G, in: https://www.6gsummit.com/
  2. [2] Discover how 6G will change our lives University of Oulo, in: https://www.oulu.fi/6gflagship/