5G speed is already incredible, is 6G network coming?

Now 4G network signals have been popularized all over the world, and the research and development and promotion of 5G networks are also being carried out in full swing around the world. Some people predict that the official commercial application of 5G networks should be officially realized in 2019, that is, next year. By then, the United States, Asia, Europe and the United Kingdom will officially enter the 5G era between 2019 and 2020.

The emergence of 5G has greatly improved the performance in terms of network speed, capacity and signal latency. In terms of the Internet of Things, AI artificial intelligence and VR virtual reality technology, it can greatly change the way we work and entertain. It is precisely because of this that major technology giants in the world, including Qualcomm, Huawei, Samsung and Nokia, have great development expectations for it. However, near the Arctic Circle in Finland on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe, some research and development teams have begun research on a technology that goes beyond 5G network.

The main concentration of this R&D group is the city of Oulu in Finland. Since the collapse of the former mobile phone giant Nokia in the mobile phone market, this small city has become the cradle of development for many start-ups and large technology companies. They all hope to be able to search for strong engineering talents in this former technological center and form new technical R&D teams. Nokia has also established a new R&D center here, dedicated to the research and development of 5G technology and the future 6G communication network.

At the 5G Test Network (5GTN) event held at the University of Oulu, Nokia and 60 institutions successfully completed the test. 5GTN will also become the cornerstone of the development of the world's first 6G mobile network project (6Genesis). The project costs 251 million euros, about 2 billion yuan. The Academy of Finland is the largest independent sponsor of the project. They are working hard with the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Oulu to develop the project. Nokia, Aalto University and the Finnish National Research Center (VTT) are also one of the sponsors of the 6Genesis project.

Ari Pouttu, the project leader, said: "The research and development of 5G test technology (5GTN) at the University of Oulu is very mature. Our goal is to use 5GTN as a basis to further build the world's first 6G network. This technology may not really enter human society until the next five or even ten years. What we need to do is to shorten this time period as much as possible and build a new generation of mobile networks as soon as possible."

He also mentioned that currently industry insiders are reluctant to call these technologies 6G. They believe that the current development does not meet the corresponding standard level. However, in fact, 6G networks have indeed slowly taken shape under the development trend of 5G. For example, the emergence of 4G networks completed the data revolution triggered by 3G networks, and 6G networks will also complete the revolution in latency and architectural transformation of 5G technology.

We all know that the popularization of 5G technology will bring the current network speed to a new level, and the spectrum processing efficiency will be more efficient. However, the early 5G network was only 3.4 GHz, which is not much different from the LTE network, but there is a landmark difference, that is, 5G can also use millimeter wave frequencies to achieve higher spectrums. Before this, people have always believed that this frequency is not suitable for mobile communications, but now it has become the core component of the 5G network and has laid a solid foundation for the development of 6G technology in the future.

However, the disadvantage of this spectrum band is that the signal has very low penetration, which means that 5G networks must be densified using micro-infrastructure, and achieving the required density requires considerable time and financial research and development. At the same time, the ultra-low latency promised by 5G networks also requires the restructuring of cellular mobile networks to be realized. Through the current infrastructure, when sending and transmitting data, mobile devices need to connect to the base station before connecting to the central network, and when transmitting data back, the corresponding signal can be received in the same way. Such steps are too complicated for the Internet of Things and other low-latency sensitive applications in the industry.

So what does 6G network mean? Pouttu said that the commercial application time of this technology should be 2030. It can provide faster speed, larger network capacity and lower latency. The early 6G network should rely on and depend on the 5G infrastructure architecture to a large extent, increase the number of radio signals and decentralized 5G network architecture. As for speed, 6G network can provide 1Tbps, and its sub-1THZ spectrum can focus on connecting trillions of mobile devices, not just the "billions" provided by 5G networks.

AI artificial intelligence technology can automatically determine the best channel for data transmission from devices to base stations and through the network, and reduce latency. Since 6G's sub-1THZ spectrum signal has weaker penetration than 5G's millimeter wave spectrum, this type of network deployment is likely to be built by building owners rather than operators. When property owners build buildings, such as shopping malls or stadiums, they can decide whether to build such a 6G network indoors, and micro-operators will be responsible for the establishment and maintenance of mobile networks, becoming the middleman connecting the basic network architecture.

The research and development of 6G networks still has a long way to go, and research and development teams like 6Genesis have just started, but it is foreseeable that the future 6G network should be developed in the direction of customized and personalized services, which can be of great use in health care, sustainable energy and autonomous driving. 1Tps speed, microsecond latency and *** network capacity, using AI to deploy networks and road traffic, all of these can be achieved. Of course, 5G networks have not yet begun to become popular, and it will take several years for 6G networks to emerge.