6G is pushing the limits of technology in many ways

If 6G works as planned, it will bring benefits to many vertical market segments.

The rollout of 6G will open the door to major changes and possibilities for many problems, but whether the technology lives up to the hype will require a massive collaborative effort, huge investments in infrastructure, and some unprecedented problems to solve. Multiple companies are already working on 6G technology, with the goal of achieving maximum speeds of 1 terabit per second (Tb/s) and latency of less than 0.1 millisecond, a 100-fold improvement over 5G. If it goes according to plan, 6G will revolutionize our daily lives and many vertical industries, including agriculture, transportation, entertainment, healthcare, fields, public safety, and smart cities. It will also promote the development of AI, AR, voice, and big data connectivity. "The new capabilities of 6G will open up new applications in the fields of AI, healthcare, and industrial applications," said Steve Hanna, distinguished CEO of the company. "But these new applications also bring new and higher risks. A successful attack could not only cause inconvenience, but also pose security risks.

For real-time applications such as robotics, simply delaying the arrival of a message could have catastrophic consequences. To address these challenges, 6G vendors will need to improve their security capabilities through network resiliency, trusted computing, and post-quantum cryptographic solutions. Still, the path to 6G is more challenging than most companies are willing to admit. The big question is whether these obstacles can be overcome before 2030, when plans are set to begin rolling out in earnest.

Vision and advantages

If 6G works as planned, it will bring benefits to many vertical market segments. For example, in the context of smart transportation, 6G-enabled cars will provide convenience and other benefits. V2X/smart infrastructure connectivity can help eliminate avoidable collisions and improve driving efficiency by optimizing urban traffic management. Meanwhile, 6G smart city support will help ambulances overcome problems such as traffic jams and shorten the time to the nearest hospital. Ultimately, traffic accidents and collisions can be reduced to almost zero. However, to achieve greater efficiency, convenience and other benefits through smart transportation, a number of prerequisites are required, including comprehensive integration of fully connected autonomous vehicles, real-time connectivity to the cloud, real-time updated mapping systems, fully functional V2X/cellular-V2X (C-V2X) and smart cities/smart infrastructure. Many believe that the key building block that makes this possible is 6G, which enables speed and low latency to ensure real-time connectivity without downtime. Autonomous driving requires more than just AS and, it requires ultra-high-speed cloud connectivity.

Figure 1: Cloud-based automotive services include increased safety, improved in-car experience, high-definition mapping, and other remote services. Source: NXP and ABI Research.

As connected healthcare develops, it will also look forward to the arrival of 6G connectivity for remote robotic surgery, where connectivity must be fast and uninterrupted. Reliability is mandatory. For remote surgery, even a few seconds of internet outage can be disastrous. Here, the entire infrastructure and supply chain – from high-speed 6G to reliable network equipment – ​​needs to work together perfectly. Successful deployment will enable patients from anywhere in the world, including underdeveloped, remote areas, to receive the best health and technology care. High-speed connectivity has the potential to support the full integration of vital sign monitoring, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and robotics (including exoskeletons), allowing medical professionals to collaborate globally. In addition, knowledge and technology can be shared to achieve better outcomes for patients. “6G will have better performance and faster data rates than 5G, which will inevitably give rise to new applications,” said Sarah LaSelva, marketing director at 6G. “However, at this stage of development, it is difficult to single out a tool that will become the killer app for 6G.

The goals for 6G are ambitious. They are designed to be broad in impact, impact more vertical industries and applications, and change the overall quality of human life.” 6G’s biggest impact may be related to optimization. “As AI technology advances and the market promise of AI-native networks expands, 6G aims to optimize everything it touches in ways that are still hard to grasp,” LaSelva said. “6G will connect the human, digital, and physical worlds by adding wireless connectivity to more things—from smartphones to wearables to machines in factories. This will generate more data that can be fed into AI to optimize not only how our wireless systems operate, but everything connected to them.” In 2022, 6G speeds were demonstrated, reaching 12 Gbps at a distance of 30 meters indoors and 2.3 Gbps at a distance of 120 meters outdoors. Separately, Ericsson has been working on new spectrum technologies, including centimeter waves (cmWave) that support frequencies from 7 to 15 GHz. Many organizations and universities around the world are also conducting 6G research. If this initiative bears fruit, it could be a boon to the entire industry. Market research firm Fact.MR expects 6G revenue to reach $300 billion by 2033. But whether this potential can be realized will depend on a variety of factors, from user experience and adoption to infrastructure construction.

6G Update

The comparison of 5G and 6G in Figure 2 below shows that 6G is pushing the limits of technology in many ways. In addition to improvements in speed and latency, 6G will also bring improvements in bandwidth, efficiency, reliability, and network coverage, significantly enhancing the user experience.

Figure 2: Comparison of 5G and 6G attributes. Source: “6G V2X technology and coordinated sensing for autonomous driving”

Standards and Alliances

As of now, there are no universally defined standards for 6G. However, multiple 6G alliances are being formed around the world. The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), in collaboration with 3GPP, which defines 5G standards, is attempting to define 6G. Its members include many tech giants such as AT&T, Cisco, Dell, Ericsson, Google, HP, Huawei, Keysight Technologies, LG, Nokia, NTT Docomo,, Samsung, T-Mobile, Verizon, and others. In addition, the ATIS Next G Alliance in North America has signed cooperation agreements with 6G-IA (Europe), 5G (South Korea), and the Beyond 5G Promotion Alliance (Japan). South Korea has announced its K-Netwk 2030 plan, which includes the launch of 6G network commercial services by 2028. Other regions have also launched 6G research programs to help advance 6G into the commercial market. The North American Next G Alliance is in active discussions with the United States. India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has set up the Bharat 6G Alliance (B6GA) to support collaboration among public and private companies, academia, research institutes and standards bodies.

The alliance submitted its opinion on the 6G technical framework to the United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU) during the ITU Geneva Conference in June 2023. Other regional research groups and organizations have also begun to aim to develop 6G guidelines and standards. The United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) and its ITU-R IMT-2030 look beyond 2030. In the initial draft recommendations of the framework, six usage scenarios are listed. They are immersive communications, massive communications, and ultra-reliable and low-latency communications. Three new ones have been added, including ubiquitous connectivity, integration of artificial intelligence and communications, and integration of sensing and communications. Ultimately, the various players in the supply chain - 6G chip developers, equipment and infrastructure providers, software developers and manufacturers - need to work together to avoid 6G fragmentation. In the meantime, companies are striving to be leaders, either independently or in collaboration.

6G obstacles

The successful implementation of 6G will not be smooth sailing, and there are many obstacles to overcome. The obvious obstacle will be building the network and mobile 6G infrastructure. Although 6G can be built on the foundation of 5G, the migration from 5G will take a long time and is still evolving. The cost of building 6G infrastructure will certainly be very high. In addition, there are spectrum allocations and many network issues that need to be resolved.

Terahertz waves

Achieving terahertz waves with both sustainable throughput and flexibility will be challenging, and the maturity of the entire 6G supply chain will take time. In addition to the basic technical challenges faced by 5G, 5G+ and 6G mmWave applications, which are susceptible to interference from weather or any solid objects (such as windows and walls), the industry still lacks a killer application that requires 6G capabilities. In addition, it will be challenging to intelligently transmit large amounts of data between chips and chiplets at data speeds that are two orders of magnitude higher. Of course, it will also be critical to define the optimal balance of computing from devices to the edge to the data center from an architectural perspective. In addition, consumer concerns about safety, security and privacy will affect the acceptance of the technology and therefore its adoption.

Figure 3: 6G timeline Source: Ericsson

6G Testing

6G testing is another important area that cannot be ignored. Furthermore, successful implementation of 6G in one location does not mean it can be scaled, which helps explain why some countries have faster 5G speeds than the United States, which has much larger coverage areas. For 6G, the expectation of reliable, uninterrupted “24/7” network service may take a lot of time and effort to achieve. Keysight’s LaSelva pointed out that achieving high data throughput performance of 100 Gbps or more in the 6G-THz (100 to 300 GHz) bands may require the use of high-order modulation and wide or even extreme occupied bandwidths of 10 to 30 GHz. “Supporting wide modulation bandwidths requires very fast () and () with high dynamic range and linearity to resolve candidate 6G waveforms with high peak-to-average ratios. IF//THz radio hardware and channel impairments will introduce significant amplitude and phase impairments over wide modulation bandwidths, which can be addressed by receiver baseband equalization algorithms.”