Pioneer in 6G Research

What is 6G?

In a nutshell, 6G is the sixth generation of the wireless communications standard for cellular networks that will succeed today's 5G (fifth generation). The research community does not expect 6G technology to replace the previous generations, though. Instead, they will work together to provide solutions that enhance our lives.

While 5G will act as a building block for some aspects of 6G, other aspects need to be new for it to meet the technical demands required to revolutionize the way we connect to the world in a fashion.

Who Will use 6G technology and what will it look like?

We began to see the shift to more machine-to-machine communication in 5G, and 6G looks to take this to the next level. While people will be end users for 6G, so will more and more of our devices. This shift will affect daily life as well as businesses and entire industries in a transformational way.

Beyond faster browsing for the end user, we can expect immersive and haptic experiences to enhance human communications. Ericsson, for example, foresees the emergence of the "internet of senses," the possibility to feel sensations like a scent or a flavor digitally. According to one Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN) report, holographic telepresence and volumetric video — think of it as video in 3D — will also be a use case. This is all so that virtual, mixed, and augmented reality could be part of our everyday lives.

what do we need to achieve 6g?

New horizons ask for new technology. It is true that 6G will greatly benefit from 5G in areas such as edge computing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), network slicing, and others. At the same time, we need changes to match new technical requirements.

The most sensible demand is understanding how to work in the sub-terahertz frequency. While 5G needs to operate in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands of 24.25 GHz to 52.6 GHz to achieve its full potential, the next generation of mobile connectivity will likely move to frequencies above 100 GHz in the ranges called sub-terahertz and possibly as high as true terahertz.

Another area of interest is designing 6G networks for AI and ML. 5G networks are starting to look at adding AI and ML to existing networks, but with 6G we have the opportunity to build networks from the ground up that are designed to work natively with these technologies.

There is also a challenge that 6G aims to tackle: security. How to ensure the data is safe and that only authorized people can have access to it — and solutions to make systems foresee complex attacks automatically.

One last technical demand is virtualization. As 5G evolves, we will start to move to the virtual environment. Open RAN (O-RAN) architectures are moving more processing and functionality into the cloud today. Solutions like edge computing will be more and more common in the future.

What are the anticipated use cases and applications driving 6G research?

As 6G is expected to be commercially available by 2030, several industry groups have published their 6G visions, including the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN), the 6G Flagship, and the Next G Alliance. The use cases and applications for next-generation communication technologies envisioned by these organizations are summarized below.

Ubiquitous connectivity: under 6G, improved inclusivity and bridging of the digital divide are pivotal social objectives. Voice, video, and broadband services will be available even in remote areas and disaster zones through advances beyond 5G, such as better non-terrestrial networks, airborne and space-borne base station swarms, and mesh access networks.

Immersive personal digital experiences: network bandwidths of 50-200 gigabits per second (Gbps) are expected, perhaps even one terabit per second (Tbps). With per-device throughputs of 300-500 megabits per second (Mbps) and microsecond latencies, users will enjoy rich communication and digital experiences through immersive high-resolution video calls, extended reality displays, and remote telepresence through multi-sensory and holographic interfaces.

Joint communications and sensing: the sub-terahertz frequencies considered under 6G will enable the combination of communication signals with waveforms that resemble those of imaging radars. The same antennas, transceivers, and spectrum can be reused for both communications and sensing, enabling use cases like using smartphones for autonomous driving or detecting people in low-visibility rescue missions.

Automobiles: automobile companies are actively researching and prototyping the use of 6G technologies for improved autonomous driving systems, real-time data processing, vehicle-to-everything communication, and advanced sensing capabilities.

Industrial-scale communications: expect widespread public and private networks with extensive use of internet-of-things (IoT) devices for smart cities, agriculture, transportation, energy grids, and environmental monitoring.

Precise positioning: indoor and outdoor positioning with accuracies of 1-10 centimeters (cm) will enable precise object and presence detection, navigation, imaging​, and mapping.

Will 6g technology be sustainable?

6G technology is expected to help humans improve sustainability in a wide array of applications. One example is by optimizing the use of natural resources in farms. Using real-time data, 6G will also enable smart vehicle routing, which will cut carbon emissions, and better energy distribution, which will increase efficiency.

Also, researchers are putting sustainability at the center of their 6G projects. Components like semiconductors using new materials should decrease power consumption. Ultimately, we expect the next generation of mobile connectivity to help achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

When Is 6g Coming?

The industry consensus is that the first 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards release to include 6G will be completed in 2030. Early versions of 6G technologies could be demonstrated in trials as early as 2028, repeating the 10-year cycle we saw in previous generations. That is the vision made public by the Next G Alliance, a North American initiative of which Keysight is a founding member, to foster 6G development in the United States and Canada.

Before launching the next generation of mobile connectivity into the market, international bodies discuss technical specifications to allow for interoperability. This means, for example, making sure that your phone will work everywhere in the world.

Here at Keysight, for instance, we are leveraging our proven track record of collaboration in 5G and Open RAN to pioneer solutions needed to create the foundation of 6G. We partner with market leaders to advance testing and measurement for emerging 6G technologies. Every week, we come across a piece of news informing that a company or a university has made a groundbreaking discovery.

The most exciting thing is that we get an inch closer to 6G every day. Tomorrow’s internet is being built today. Join us in this journey; it is just the beginning.