Every generation of this telecommunication protocol has taken about 10 years from the time it was first published to the actual realization of the tech. 2020, we finally saw 5G being delivered to the mass users and now 6G has been published as something to discuss for future. What is 6G? How different will it be from 5G? Is it just another speed bump for networks ? What are some extreme applications that will benefit from it ? When will it arrive in the hands of the users ? And many more... will be covered in this article!
Recently, Samsung has published a white paper showcasing the types of applications that 6G would be targeting and their R&D plans for it. There are few other publications that have listed similar stuff in more detailed manner. Dr. Juho Lee from Samsung's Technology Standardization team has recently shared in an article that with 6G people would be able to communicate through "holograms", ultra light weight devices would be used instead of cumbersome laptops and the "physical" world would as such be copied to "digital" to help keep the world "safe". Now, these may seem very futuristic and revolutionary or "Matrix" type , but these words are generalized and not specific. Though Samsung claims it's white paper to the first one, there were few other white papers published by academics that tackle this discussion in a more technical manner. The article was from Oulu University, Finland and they have pretty much shared an overall view of what can be expected from 6G.
Firstly .. the Speeds ?
I know most us would want to know the speed up this new "G" would offer. Well, don't keep your hopes high! .. Just kidding. It's going to be of the order of 1000 Gbps. From the below image, you can see the "peak data rate" to be around 1000 Gbps and User Experienced Data Rate could be a crazy 1 Gbps. What's more to that ? The energy efficiency is going to be 2X more than 5G, the latency is going to be 1/10th that of 5G, the number of devices that can be serviced per square kilometer would be 10 times more and the data error rates are going to be 1/10th of 5G. If these numbers don't impress you, you gotta go get yourself checked! :P
The Goals of 6G ..What is the main aim of 6G?
These are some of the goals listed in the white paper by Oulu University. I know some of the humanitarian goals are just too good to be true sounding , but hey if we aim at the moon we would land among the stars right ? (pretty sure, that was not the motto for Neil Armstrong!) Yes these goals may seem difficult at this time to achieve, but try imagining them 10 to 15 years from now. Technical goals seem much more achievable probably because they are the driving force behind this tech. Another important quadrant (fourth) that is really important from global perspective, is the one that covers the Health, Manufacturing, Finance, Transport, Education, Agriculture, Energy and FinTech ,all of which have been severly challenged during the pandemic in 2020! I'm sure people would definitely want to avoid these industry collapses in the future and what the 6G aims seems to be in alignment with global sentiments. That's big thumbs up from my side ! It's one of the things that I would personally want to see 6G being used for.
Applications !
In the previous image, you could see some of the applications mentioned. But, I feel the one that is going to be focused a lot on is the, Holo Telepresence. The AR,VR and XR tech has really started to penetrate into consumer devices and big tech companies are investing heavily into them. The next iteration to this would be the Hologram revolution , you know enough of 2D ..let's get 3D ! Smartphones would slowly start to phase out as more of the light weight "wearables" start to take over. The real and the virtual environments are going to be blended in so much so that realtime 3D telepresence in any part of the world would look as real as in person presence.
The "Tera Hertz" frequencies would enable ultra low latency for applications like autonomous transport and industrial manufacturing. As the internet is penetrating nooks and corners of developing nations, more of the shopping is shifting towards online methods, which we are already witnessing. What could be addition to this would be specialized safe and autonomous aerial package delivery devices that would soon be plaguing the skies around us. 6G would improve the remote sensing and location accuracy giving much more insights into the environment surrounding a particular device.
3D imaging is going to be one of the hot topics to look out for , which could very well be integrated with AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning to improve the accuracy of the algorithms deployed. Robots and automation would be used heavily to make humans ever lazy as efficiency is targeted hugely. Sensor technologies and their fusion into smart wearables would pretty much lead to an end to smartphone and laptop technology in probably the next decade or two.
Technical Aspects .. Won't get too technical, I promise!
To start off with 5G operates in the 6GHz band or 60GHz band (mmWave) , while the 6G would try to operate in the "Tera Hertz" band. 1 Tera Hertz(THz) is equals to 1000 GHz. Whoa!!! We are going to be operating in whole new frequency band away from all the clutter in the commercial bands! Just imagine the amount of bandwidth that's going to be available to use! It's probably a good decision, because of the exponential increase in the number of smart devices that are going to be in use by 2030! That being said, the range of the THz bands would be significantly lesser compared to GHz bands, which implies more number of cell towers per square kilometer to be deployed. Another interesting thing about 6G is that it's not essentially going to increase the cell towers a thousand times, but is probably going to depend on Satellites for the same. Tesla's STARLINK is one very good example for the same and Elon Musk seems to be investing in the right direction.
The traditional electronics based out of Silicon would have to shift to composite materials like Silicon Germanium (SiGe) or Indium Phosphide ( III-V) to support these THz frequencies. As process technology reaches the Angstrom unit (10 to the power of -10 meters) it becomes essential to embrace Hetero Junction Bipolar Transistor (HBT) to the currently used Bipolar Junction Transistors (BJT).
When can we expect to see a commercial launch of 6G?
As has been the trend with predecessors, the 6G could very well be launched in 2030. With AI andML and other advanced tech being used it is possible to see it a bit earlier than expected. The challenging and key part is achieving sub tera hertz or tera hertz frequencies miniaturized to hand held size. As 5G penetrates further, in another couple of years the tech would be much more affordable and widely used. That's when a focus shift on tech for 6G would be prioritized.
How will it impact the common public ?
6G would be much more deeply integrated within the daily usage as all the computations and the data storage would be shifted to cloud and there would be massive drop in the personal physical storage. So, the devices in daily use would essentially be connected to the internet throughout the day , which also means the devices in use would not worry about anything but delivery the final output of the computations done at the cloud. Holographic telepresence and 3D virtualization would be further deployed to the masses. Education and Health industry would get more digitized and automated with remote sensing capabilities. In general, the concept of being "in person" for any activity would start declining exponentially. Offices and factories would witness the same leading to restricted movement of actual physical beings. On the flip side, it would mean that people would have more time for themselves and can work on maintaining their health and spending time with their families.
How much will actually get implemented ?
This is the interesting question, one must ask. Considering the infrastructure needed for this kind of development and technology is very challenging for developing nations, but something developed nations already possess. It's difficult to say all of the stuff will be implemented by 2030, except for few of the important applications. What's more realistic is to expect these applications start to take shape and probably see the fruits of these in another 15 years (optimistically).
Finally, is 6G just another speed up ?
I don't think so. What I haven't mentioned previously, is the privacy and security aspects of 6G which was not focused as much in 5G. People will be given more control over the way their data is handled and data localization would be greatly appreciated. 5G is the first step to industrial adoption of the communication technology and 6G would be further adopted in high risk applications which so far have demanded human touch. It's going to be impacting the daily lives of the people much more than any other communication technology so far.
Let me know in the comments, what you think!
Until then Stay safe.
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