In a session on the future of 6G during the Mobile World Congress, expert speakers from companies such as Samsung, European Space Agency y Telefónica they met to give their opinion on how 6G will develop.
The first thing to note is that it won't be coming anytime soon. Forecasts suggest that 6G will only reach our hands from 2030, so you'd better calm down your anger for now. That being said, the prospect of having a device stream at least a terabyte of data to our eyes is enough to make our geek hearts race. We are talking about a capacity 100 times greater than that of 5G, with latencies of less than a millisecond.
In the round table participated Kimberley Trommler (Head of Thinknet 6G, Bayern Innovativ GmbH), yue wang (Head of 6G Research, Samsung Research UK), Xavier Lobao (Head of the Future Telecommunications Projects Division, European Space Agency) and Nicolas Kourtellis (Principal Scientific Investigator, Co-Director, Telefónica Research).
Asked if they had to pick just one of the most exciting aspects of 6G, the panel gave mixed opinions.
While it may not be an issue that most consumers are concerned about, one aspect that the panel was excited about was the significant reduction in power consumption. Obviously, this would mean that 6G could be deployed in a much wider range of scenarios than 5G, such as IoT devices. There was also talk of real applications of "edge computing" and much greater cybersecurity.
One word that came up several times in the conversation was "convergence." It was conjured not in engineering terms, but in the sense of the convergence of terrestrial and non-terrestrial (ie space) networks to offer seamless connectivity.
6G also promises greater network resilience. Thanks to the staggering bandwidth of 6G, virtual education via XR headsets is likely to be booming. This, of course, could provide a real boost to the UN Sustainable Goals (especially important in emerging economies).
The panel also highlighted how much more robust 6G networks will be from a consumer point of view. Smart labeling in the 6G environment will mean that any type of product will be traceable. Smart cities, holographic meetings and 3D mapping were mentioned during the session.
But what will be the "killer app" of 6G? During the debate the metaverse was mentioned several times, but coming to 6G "in a more holistic way", said one of them.
Applications will also include precision manufacturing with robotics, autonomous vehicle communications, and even brain-computer interfaces.. “Kinetic content” and “AI generated content” will be much more accessible on 6G networks, as well as “digital replicas”. So, for example, medical students could be trained using holographic patients that they can safely err as many times as they need to.
6G also promises the concept of “privacy-preserving federated learning” (ppFL), in which multiple parties can train a single model without sharing their raw training data. For example, the potential for cyberattacks on neural networks could be mitigated by using ppFL, where the system quickly learns to repel an attack. Another example is when it is necessary to submit personal information about a hospitalized patient, but even de-anonymized data can present a privacy risk. A federated learning system makes it possible.
But how can we get it?
It seems that the jump from 5G to 6G will be much easier than the change from 3G to 4G. Much of the hard work has already been done, and the networks seem -at least- to be primed and ready for this new world..
