2022, 6G development continues to heat up

Development of 6G networks is gathering pace, with a new Finnish consortium looking to speed development of the next-generation radio technology and a Japan-U.S. alliance seeking to lead the standardization of technology crucial for unmanned applications.

The development and deployment of 6G is seen as a “trillion-dollar opportunity” for the mobile industry, with leadership in the technology increasingly becoming a political priority for many governments around the world.

While it’s too early to predict the final form the 6G standard will take and what technologies it will include, there are some reasonable assumptions about its capabilities and the challenges facing operators, manufacturers, and researchers.

6G Radio

Naturally, 6G networks will deliver huge advances in speed, capacity and low latency, while they are expected to be more intelligent and reliable. This will provide superior mobile broadband while also supporting advanced services such as truly immersive extended reality (XR), high-fidelity mobile holograms and digital twins.

Central to these applications will be 6G’s ability to compensate for current limitations — such as the limited processing power of mobile devices — and integrate intelligence into the network.

If the most ambitious goals are achieved, 6G will have 100 times the capacity of 5G and will be able to support 10 million devices per square kilometer.

The signal will extend 10,000 meters above the surface, enabling “3D coverage” of the sky, space and underwater. All of these capabilities will allow for smart sensing, positioning, edge computing and high-definition imaging.

However, one of the biggest challenges may be spectrum, with 6G using higher frequencies to maximize capacity gains, including 1THz and sub-THz levels. Radio technology and spectrum are the focus of the new Finnish project.

The country has a long history of developing radio access network (RAN) technology and hopes to maintain that tradition as the industry moves from 5G to 6G. The RF Sampo project consists of nine companies and three research institutes, including Nokia, Bittium and the University of Oulu.

6G Standardization

“Finland has a long tradition in radio technology, which is at the heart of wireless systems,” said Nokia’s Saila Tammelin, who is the industrial lead for the project. “RF Sampo aims to strengthen Finland’s competitiveness in radio technology while moving beyond industrial 5G and towards 6G.”

"RF Sampo encompasses the development of radio subsystems, components and algorithms. It also addresses the development of working methods that enable innovations to be put into use more quickly, for example through more efficient simulation and modelling methods. Solving the challenges of increasingly complex wireless systems requires close R&D collaboration between companies and research institutions – to expand and update the knowledge base and innovation capabilities of Finland,"

RF Sampo will focus on making 6G radio technology as efficient as possible, leveraging the power of new frequency bands and antenna technologies, and creating designs that reduce the complexity of 6G. Specifically, it will research new RF technologies for 5G and 6G, including antenna structures, integrated circuits, new RF architectures, and algorithms.

Separately, Japan and the United States will collaborate to commercialize chip-scale atomic clock technology, which is essential for real-time control and positioning of unmanned vehicles and drones in a manner similar to GPS. It is hoped that the technology will be developed by 2025, and the effort will include a range of industries, including the automotive, mobile and watch industries.

Given that my country will have a greater influence on the development of 6G than previous generations of mobile connectivity, Japan and the United States will also want to maintain a leading position in standardization.