The development of what will become 6G networks is accelerating, with a new Finnish consortium seeking to speed the development of next-generation radio technology and a US-Japanese coalition seeking to lead the standardization of the technology that is going to be essential for unmanned applications.
The development and deployment of 6G is seen as a "trillion dollar deal" for the mobile industry, while technical leadership is increasingly a political priority for many governments around the globe.
While it is early days to predict what final form the 6G standard will take and what technologies will be included, there are some plausible assumptions about its capabilities and the challenges facing operators, manufacturers, and scholars alike.
6G wireless
Naturally, 6G networks are going to offer huge advances in speed, capacity and low latency, while also being expected to be considerably smarter and more reliable. This will deliver superior mobile broadband, but will also enable advanced services such as truly immersive extended reality (XR), high-loyalty mobile holograms and digital twins.
6G's ability to compensate for current constraints, such as limited processing power on mobile devices, and the integration of intelligence into the internet will be at the heart of these applications.
If the most ambitious goals are achieved, 6G will give a hundred times the capacity of 5G and will be able to accept ten million devices per square kilometer.
The signals would extend 000 meters above the surface, leaving "3D coverage" in the sky, space and underwater. Each and every one of these capabilities would leave intelligent detection, positioning, edge computing, and high-definition imaging.
Probably one of the biggest challenges, however, is ghosting, as 6G uses even higher frequencies to maximize capacity gains, even at 1 THz and below. Technology and the radio ghost are the focus of a new project in Finland.
The country has a long history of developing radio access network (RAN) technologies and wants to sustain this legacy as the industry transitions from 5G to 6G. The RF Sampo project involves 9 companies and 3 research organizations, including Nokia, Bittium and the University of Oulu.
6G standardization
"Finland has a strong tradition in radio technologies that are at the heart of wireless systems," said Saila Tammelin of Nokia, who is the industry leader of the project. “RF Sampo aims to strengthen Finland's competitiveness in radio technologies as it moves beyond industrial 5G and towards 6G.
“RF Sampo includes the development of radio subsystems, components and algorithms. It also addresses the development of work methods that allow a faster implementation of innovations, to serve as an example, through more effective simulation and modeling methodologies. Solving the challenges of increasingly complex wireless systems requires close R&D cooperation between companies and research organizations to broaden and renew the knowledge base and innovation capacity in Finland.”
RF Sampo is going to focus on making 6G radio technology as efficient as possible, harnessing the power of new frequency bands and antenna technologies, and creating designs that reduce the difficulty of 6G. In particular, it will study new RF technologies for 5G and 6G, including antenna structures, integrated circuits, new RF architectures, and algorithms.
Separately, Japan and the US will work together to commercialize atomic clock chip technology that will be essential to monitoring and finding GPS-like real-time unmanned cars and drones. The hope is that the technology will be developed by XNUMX, and the sacrifices will include a plurality of industries, including the automotive, mobile, and watchmaking fields.
With China set to have a considerably greater impact on 6G development than previous generations of mobile connectivity, Japan and the US are hoping to sustain their lead in standardization.
- It'll be a while before you can get your hands on 6G, so why not check out the best 5G phone deals?