As 5G evolves, 6G takes aim at Internet of Everything

We’re now on the fifth generation of mobile communications technology, the latest phase of an evolutionary process that began in the 1980s and has seen the introduction of a new standard every decade.

5G promises much higher data rates, much lower latencies and support for many more terminals per unit area served than have previously been possible. The standard is now being rolled out by operators worldwide. For many customers, though, 5G remains a “nice-to-have” rather than an essential upgrade.

The race is on to find the killer app for 5G, much like SMS was for 3G and social media for 4G.  

The evolution of 5G

The standards development process rolls on. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), an umbrella body for telecoms standards development, has already frozen Releases 15 and 16 of the 5G specifications. Release 15 defines the foundational baseband, mobile broadband and millimeter-wave connectivity technologies used to deliver 5G services. Release 16 offers some improvements to core mobile broadband features, massive MIMO mobility and millimeter-wave connectivity. Release 16 is also adding technology to serve the need for time-sensitive networking in industrial applications and to address some of the issues involved in using 5G to provide connectivity between vehicles and other entities, so-called V2X.

Release 17 continues that work and introduces options to incorporate satellite connectivity into the standard. It will also see the introduction of technology options such as integrated access and backhaul. Through this feature, base stations can be daisy-chained together. The “sidelinking” feature will allow suitably equipped mobile terminals to talk directly without accessing the core network.

Timescales for the development of new releases of the 5G standard (Source: 3GPP)

These three releases flesh out the 5G standard so it can fully deliver on its initial promise. The second phase of development, to be specified in Releases 18 through 20, will deliver a major evolution of 5G to form what tradition suggests will be called 5G Advanced. This is likely to emerge in the second half of this decade and may include features such as full-duplex communications as well as different ways of transmitting and receiving signals to improve coverage, latency and reliability.

The role of AI and ML

This may also be where artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) start to become critically important in mobile networks, in two ways. The first is obvious. 5G, especially when used to advance Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, will support enormous amounts of data that could be analyzed. For example, perhaps ML could be used to manage the handoff between cells for a car on the move. With enough data about expected traffic patterns and current cell-utilization rates, ML algorithms could either advance or delay handoff to ensure that all nearby users get the best possible service.

The second application of ML could be in addressing the complexity of the networks themselves. For example, 5G specifies the use of beam-forming techniques to ensure that terminals equipped to use millimeter-wave signals get as much of the signal as possible. This can be done by using multiple antennas at a single site or collaboratively by distributed antennas. But it may take ML techniques to optimize the signals transmitted by each antenna to have the greatest effect at the receiver. There will be plenty of similar co-optimization challenges as mobile networks become more disaggregated and virtualized, and as computation becomes more widespread within them.

Enabling everything-to-everything communications

5G Advanced is expected to take us right through to 2030. As is traditional, though, work on 6G is already underway to define what the standard will do and how it will do it. If 5G is, in part, about enabling the IoT, 6G is about enabling the Internet of Everything – including you.

As is usual at this stage, the implementation technology, purpose and utility of 6G are being thought about in the broadest possible terms. The exaHexa-X project, part of the European Union’s research and development program, suggests that the defining application for 6G will be to enable rich connectivity between the digital world and our human biological world so that “digital twins” (i.e., very advanced simulations) of our physical environment and our biological selves can run in digital environments. The argument goes that by deploying massive amounts of sensors in the real world and applying AI and ML techniques to the data that they produce, we will be better able to anticipate our needs and then automate interventions in the real world that create positive outcomes for us.

It’s a very broad ambition, but exaHexa-X is already exploring what it will take to achieve this. There are six main goals for the project:

• to explore the interconnection of digital and real worlds
• to enable vast networks of networks including body-area networks  
• sustainability through energy efficiency
• equal access for everyone
• extreme connectivity and experiences
• high levels of trust and security

With these in place, the Hexa-X team sees 6G used to enable applications such as intelligent machines that communicate with each other and their digital twins, vast sensor networks that make it possible to have immersive experiences in digital representations of the physical world, advanced telepresence systems, and merged-reality gaming and workplaces. Digital twins of our bodies will even open new ways of achieving precision medicine.

What will it take to build the network that can enable this vision? The key characteristics seem to be almost limitless connectivity in any context, much stronger facilities for ensuring security and enabling trust, a fully cognitive network that can learn how to manage its complexity to deliver the flexibility needed and lots of computing capacity that is so widely distributed through the network that it becomes a network-computing fabric.

If your day-to-day experience suggests that mobile technology is ubiquitous now, this vision of 6G suggests that we haven’t seen anything yet.

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