Brought to you by Keysight Technologies
The next generation of mobile technology will bring huge improvements in bandwidth usage, data delivery and application enablement. 6G is expected to provide download speeds of nearly one terabit per second, one microsecond of latency, and unlimited bandwidth.
6G will enable creative ways for people to interact with their environment, including instant communication, connected robotics, autonomous systems and wireless artificial intelligent interactions.
Keysight’s 6G Program Manager, Roger Nichols, answers questions about the technological advancements needed to enable the vision of 6G.
Q: What will 6G do for us?
A: 6G goes one step further than 5G in integrating communications with computing, making Network as a Service (NaaS) and Compute as a Service (CaasS) seamless.
A: 6G goes one step further than 5G in integrating communications with computing, making Network as a Service (NaaS) and Compute as a Service (CaasS) seamless.
This requires the use of advanced communications to flexibly distribute computations between cloud/centralized, edge, and client to be optimized based on use-case, business, and environmental considerations.
Extending to new use cases in government, business, healthcare and education will all benefit by leveraging new capabilities in 6G to do what previous generations of communications technology couldn’t.
For example, a better resource-centralized blended education with improved engagement, flexibility and reduced latency could be a godsend.
More efficient transportation of goods and services with automated supply chain management for communications and computing, global positioning systems that use AI to anticipate needs, reduce waste and address emergencies; can be another.
Combining advanced communications and location information with advanced sensing and distributed computing makes mechanical automation more sophisticated. Cooperative robotics will enable automated transportation and play an essential role in manufacturing, construction, mining and emergency management.
Immersive telepresence can combine 3D haptic holography and computing to deliver real-time automated language translation for teleconferencing, or integrate a haptic hologram with a digital twin and a physical system for remote training or troubleshooting.
Q: How can use cases like this be accomplished?
A: New use cases require development in technology, business models, policies and even in social interaction.
The technologies involved will need to manage much faster data rates, further reduce latency, provide predictable timing in less than a millisecond, increase the density of the data device/users it can handle, and seamlessly connect wireline, microwave point-to- point, terrestrial cellular, satellite, Wi-Fi, PAN (Bluetooth), NFC and other network types.
The network will need to become more reliable and resilient as it will be used by more ubiquitous use cases by applications for which the stakes are higher in terms of society, security, business risk and environmental impact.
New software technologies are needed for distributed cloud, edge, client computing, while improvements in artificial intelligence will be combined with computing to optimize system performance for use cases. And the resource efficiency of systems will need to improve, with special emphasis on energy and spectrum.
Significant improvements in cybersecurity will be needed, as applied to mobile wireless systems, to cover a massive expansion of use cases and threat surface, and an increase in the deployment of the systems.
Q: How does 6G support the growing Internet of Things (IoT) / Internet of Everything (IoE)?
A: As suggested, the flexibility and capacity of the network coupled with distributed computing and discovery systems – some perhaps even embedded in humans – means a more seamless collaboration of our various communication technologies.
In 2016, Mischa Dohler from Kings College London (now with Ericsson) gave a lecture on IoT saying, “We don’t really have a internet of thingswe have a intranet of things” (or rather multiple intranets of things).
What he meant by this was that the value of IoT (and ultimately IoE) is not only the interconnection, but also the use of the resulting data in an economical and secure way.
Most IoT systems do not communicate with each other and do not share data to leverage knowledge (such as between a parking management system and a traffic management system). This kind of communication is either not done, or it is quite difficult and time consuming.
Therefore, a major advance required in 6G has almost nothing to do with the radio link, but much more to do with how the information in the system can be used.
By merging sensing, communication, and distributed computation into a larger programmable network, we can leverage the technology in more extensive ways.
Q: What is the roadmap for 6G specifications?
A: Assuming 3GPP remains the de facto specification group for a global standard, we can expect first work in 3GPP specifications to begin around 2025. Some people claim that the first deployable 6G features will come in release 21.
That said, there are two other things to keep in mind. First, 3GPP is not the only specification body that will contribute to 6G. Changes will have to be made by IETF, various parts of ETSI and O-RAN.
However, in order to standardize things, a lot of work needs to be done to develop and prove the technological advances necessary to realize the vision – not only is the list long, but each item has many levels of complexity and requires innovation in all. those levels.
This means that standardization can only really take off when we have more confidence in our ability to realize the necessary technologies.
Q: Where is Keysight located in 6G and what is the purpose of Keysight?
A: Keysight creates tools for design and measurement, from research to production, implementation and operations and from the physical layer to the application layer, including security, digital twins and our own growing use of AI.
So we are in a position to provide technologists with the tools to optimize their designs, model them before deployment, assess how well their designs and systems work, and make adjustments and updates to further enhance functionality and performance. optimize. Our job is to provide the tools the wireless communications industry needs to turn the 6G vision into reality.
Roger Nichols’ more than 3 decades of engineering and management experience in wireless testing and measurement at Hewlett-Packard, Agilent Technologies and Keysight includes roles in manufacturing, R&D and marketing.
He has led programs, projects and departments starting with analog mobile radio, evolving to 5G and on every standard in between. He has been leading Keysight’s 5G and now 6G programs since 2014. He also leads Keysight’s wireless standard strategies.