Learn the basics of 6G

6G stands for sixth generation wireless. It will include relevant technologies considered too immature for 5G or which are outside the defined scope of 5G.

6G Flagship was the first 6G programme to start developing 6G technology, already in mid 2018.

One of the key things 6G will need to do is to provide tools for massive automation of the 2030s society. It will also have to help in fulfilling United Nations sustainable development goals. Speaking from a more technical perspective, it will help merge the physical, digital and biological worlds, offering us smart applications for our daily life.

6G will operate at terahertz frequency bands, delivering a peak data throughput of 1,000 gigabits/s with an air latency of less than 100 microseconds. When comparing 5G and 6G network speeds, 6G is predicted to be 100 times faster than 5G, with improved reliability and broader network coverage.

6G Flagship Vice Director, Professor Ari Pouttu, discusses what 6G is in his keynote.

Professor Matti Latva-aho explains how 6G will change the world

In the 2030s, 6G will merge our physical, digital and biological worlds. We have to solve how to get digital services to everybody, anywhere globally, and do it guided by the UN sustainable development goals. Professor Matti Latva-aho, Director of the world’s first global 6G research programme, tells what’s in store.

The University of Oulu has a long tradition and a strong track record in wireless communication research over a very long time. The university decided to apply to the national research flagship competition in this field – a competition we won in 2018 with the 6G research programme we’re running today. Starting a 6G research in 2018, when even 5G was not ready yet, did cause some raised eyebrows. Deservedly, however, we received a lot of attention globally and got many collaborators from companies and other research groups. The results and the attention on social media have so far been downright astonishing.

6G Flagship envisions a future society towards 2030, which is data driven and enabled by near-instant, unlimited wireless connectivity. 6G will emerge around 2030 to meet the expectations that 5G did not meet and new ones fusing AI-inspired applications in every field of society with ubiquitous wireless connectivity.

Key driver for 6G are the ways in which data is collected, processed, transmitted and consumed within the wireless network.

The 6G Flagship aims to solidify a global 6G research vision that considers future productivity and service quality demands, among other things, but also focuses on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) as significant drivers. To that end, the 6G Flagship creates a broad 6G ecosystem with its stakeholders to address how 6G can act as an enabler to aid in achieving the SDGs and how 6G development should incorporate the SDGs into the research and development phase.

Many challenges arise in developing 6G from technical, regulatory, and business perspectives. Higher carrier frequency operations and increased data use raise new questions about who can use data and spectrum in the new 6G ecosystem with shifting stakeholder roles.

Micro operators and private networks is definitely one of the ways to go. Micro-operator is typically a player who can build networks, specifically for verticals. They can optimise their product portfolio to produce services for niche consumer groups.

Professor Ari Pouttu discusses this in more depth on the video.

Every ten years, a new mobile standard is developed to meet the growing needs of wireless networks, which are rapidly expanding into new application areas. 5G was the first step towards the next mobile technology breakthrough, and 6G will be the next. And the development will not end there; 7G will appear in due course.

No one knows this yet when we are in the intense 6G research phase. Many new ideas have been presented. The transmission bandwidth used in 6G will increase even more, and in the medium frequencies, we will go far higher from where we are today. Smart antenna technologies are also developing at a breakneck speed, and their enhancement, driven by artificial intelligence algorithms, is taking giant strides ahead at the moment. Of course, we also have quite a few challenges to solve, such as the energy efficiency of networks and devices, where 5G has not succeeded in the best way possible.

Transmission speed and transmission delay, positioning capability that is more accurate than GPS even indoors, graphically displaying applications on new types of terminal devices, also bringing broadband connections at a sufficient quality level even to remote areas – this is what the digitalising society of the future needs.

That is the question. 5G has not truly transformed our daily lives. We would require imaginative new consumer solutions for the export market to keep up with technological advancements.  Now the main focus in development has been on professional use. That’s why the real benefits of 5G have been left behind while the data speed growth has played a central role in operator marketing.

The digital twins, which are under current research and development, i.e. as-realistic-as-possible copies of the original physical embodiments of the machines, industrial processes, and, possibly at some point also of people, are expected to be the big new things that make everyday life smoother. In limited cases and applications, you can work remotely in real-time, even to carry out demanding surgical procedures or repair complex machines. I.e. the need to move from one place to another is reduced. And everyday life becomes smoother, leaving more time for other things.

This is an excellent example of that, in addition to new technology, new reforms to legislation and other regulations are needed. Now, this is not permitted on a large scale. And it will still take some time for the robot cars to function reliably in, for example, snowy conditions.

It depends on what you mean by smart homes. In many respects, smart homes are possible with the technologies existing already. There are yet very few affordable, easy-to-use applications yet available. 5G and 6G will also bring new kinds of application possibilities to this field. And it’s really up to our imagination how we develop home environments with the help of automation.

The 6G standard is estimated to be ready in 2028, and the products will start hitting the market by 2030. Also smartphones. This will take place globally. 6G standardisation is international cooperation involving all parties developing mobile technologies. The states are firmly committed globally.

We don’t believe it’ll only serve those who live in cities. One of the goals of 6G is global coverage. So that sufficient high-quality coverage is available even in remote areas in the 6G era. Of course, it’s a fact that the most significant investments are made in places with more people. Networks are built as per market conditions also in the future. In our research activities, addressing remote areas and poorer regions of the world so that they become part of the digital services of the 6G era is an important goal.

IoT was more of the things that came into focus with 5G. 6G will continue where 5G left off in IoT. And, of course, it will also drive development in this area. Reliable communication between devices is seen as a particular area of development in applications where there is no room for errors.

It is about a broader industrial revolution, where 6G technology is a critical factor among many others, such as the development of artificial intelligence or, for example, robotisation. It is a highly automated society where many daily routines are managed, hidden from view, by intelligent devices and processes without the active participation of humans.

Of course. And first of all, it will go where there is money and the willingness to invest and develop society’s key digital services to create the smart cities of the future.

Artificial intelligence algorithms are one key technology element in making 6G networks work optimally for the most diverse operating environments and purposes. With them, the network is automatically tuned to work optimally both from the point of view of transmission capacity and, for example, energy efficiency.

This depends on many factors, like Traficom‘s agility and desire to strive to be among the first, as well as on national R&D programmes where this could be taken as a top goal. In the end, it is the mobile operators who build the networks. In the long run, everything depends on their ability to invest. Professor Matti Latva-aho says he thinks it’s not essential to be first. The most important thing is that timely investment decisions are made in Finland in terms of 6G.

Research activities were started with public funding in 2018. And this year, we’ve embarked on the first projects with public funding in cooperation with companies. The next important step is the industry’s investments to ensure that Finland has the necessary technological know-how at the end of this decade when the commercialisation of 6G products really starts.

The fact that the world’s first 6G research programme started specifically in Finland says a lot. From the start, we have been creating a 6G vision that reflects Western democracies, which has since received wide approval. The UN’s sustainable development goals are the key drivers in 6G development. They manifest in how we develop new consumer-oriented services and business models. Or when we look for solutions to improve network coverage in remote areas at a low cost and aim to keep the energy consumption of mobile networks reasonable. It is of the utmost importance that the EU countries, on a broad front, are jointly creating the 6G standard in accordance with European values in cooperation with like-minded nations.

These frequencies will not be feasible soon. It could take until late 2030s.

Professor Ari Pouttu discusses this in more depth on the video.

In Shannon’s famous paper, there is a meta-data type of thinking. Research has started a couple of years ago on these principles. It’s difficult to say if this will be available already in the early stages of 6G.

Professor Ari Pouttu discusses this in more depth on the video.

It’s all about speed of light. 100μs (microseconds) is basically 30km. It cannot be that long. If we talk about 100μs, we typically talk about few kilometres.

Professor Ari Pouttu discusses this in more depth on the video.

The Finnish 6G Flagship is a vibrant research and co-creation environment for 5G adoption and 6G innovation. It is led by the University of Oulu and funded by the Research Council of Finland, a governmental funding agency for high-quality scientific research.

At the start of the programme, five partners were announced: Aalto University, Business Oulu, Nokia, Oulu University of Applied Sciences, and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. Since then, two other companies — Keysight Technologies and InterDigital — have stepped on board as co-founders. Memorandums of understanding have also been signed with other participants.

As 5G enters the deployment phase, 6G Flagship assists global industry in finalizing the 5G standard, mainly through collaborative projects, trials, and demonstrations. Simultaneously, 6G Flagship experts are already working hard on critical technology components and solutions for the wireless era of 2030. Wireless Connectivity, Devices and Circuit Technology, Distributed Intelligence, and Human-centric Wireless Services are the four interconnected strategic research areas within the 6G Flagship. All of them aim for major scientific breakthroughs.

6G Flagship is an eight-year programme that began in May 2018. The primary goals of the 6G Flagship are to assist companies in finalizing the 5G standard by conducting technology and system pilots, to develop the fundamental technology components required for 6G systems, and to accelerate the reliable, robust, and secure digitization of society through 5G and 6G. These three themes are intertwined.

So far, the 6G Flagship results have been documented in 3,240 peer reviewed scientific publications.

In September 2019, 6G Flagship published the world’s first 6G white paper, which describes the 6G vision and key research questions for 6G development. The white paper focuses on the major research challenges and contributes to creating a research agenda for the next decade. The white paper is based on a workshop during the first-ever 6G Wireless Summit in 2019.

Since the first white paper, 6G Flagship has led 12 expert groups to create 12 additional white papers.

One group focused on the relationship between 6G and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Another looked into connectivity for remote areas. Both posed significant societal issues. A third expert group created 6G business scenarios. The remaining groups covered validation and trials, broadband connectivity, networking, machine learning, RF and spectrum, edge intelligence, security and privacy, critical and massive machine-type communications, and localisation and sensing.

The papers have proved to be of tremendous interest all over the world, with a total of over 1 million downloads.

Every two years, 6G Flagship produces reports for Research Council of Finland. These reports are for the Research Council’s internal use.

5G Test Network facilities in the northern city of Oulu, Finland, provide unique opportunities for real-time testing of your 5G technology, components, or new services. 5GTN meets the most stringent requirements for 5G trials with its two closely located facilities at the University of Oulu and the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

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See also 5G/6G Test Network – the nexus of 6G Flagship