6G competition is surging up, can China continue to lead?

Globally, 5G network construction is in full swing, although its commercial value is still in the exploration and expansion stage, but the industry has been eager to start the next generation of 6G technology research. Especially with the release of white papers on 6G by a number of industry organizations, research institutions, communication manufacturers and operators to the society, 6G has gradually broken the circle and become one of the hot topics that have attracted public attention.

Why do you need 6G?

6G is the next generation of mobile communication technology, which will continue to break the limitations of communication technology on the basis of undertaking 5G and promote the continuous progress of human society.

The development of digital technology will make it possible to create a virtual digital world, and the future of mankind will be a new world in which the real physical world and the virtual digital world are deeply integrated and all things are intelligently connected. For example, the future of terminal equipment, touch screen input will become the past, through a new type of human-machine interface, people will even rely on brain sensors to manipulate machinery and equipment; for example, holographic communication and sensory interconnection will be popularized in the future work and social activities, people will be able to be free from the limitations of time and space, to achieve multi-dimensional sensory integration response. For example, in the cities of the future, countless intelligent sensors, intelligent robots, and driverless vehicles will improve work efficiency and accuracy through mutual collaboration and learning, and calmly respond to various real-time changes.

To meet the needs of these future scenarios, it is necessary for mobile communication networks to provide faster speeds, greater throughput, lower latency, more reliable stability, more intelligent scheduling, lower energy consumption, etc., in order to achieve the connection and integration of the physical world and the digital world, which is the problem that 6G has to solve.

6G to surpass 5G in terms of speed and bandwidth, first of all, to solve the spectrum problem. Wireless spectrum is the basis for the development of mobile communications, but also a scarce resource, from 1G to 5G mobile communications centralized use of wireless spectrum is below 6GHz, mainly based on the low-band spectrum can achieve wide coverage of the economic characteristics, but also limited by the lack of bandwidth and sacrificing the higher pursuit of speed; so in order to achieve a breakthrough in rate and bandwidth, 5G for the first time will expand mobile communication technology to 24GHz to 50GHz millimeter wave band, The pioneering journey of mobile communication technology in the high-frequency band has begun; in the future, 6G can only advance into the higher frequency band than millimeter wave to reclaim it if it wants to achieve higher speeds and greater bandwidth than 5G.

Therefore, the terahertz band from 100GHz to 10000GHz (or 0.1-10THz) is generally regarded as the most likely operating band for 6G. Compared with millimeter waves, the terahertz band has a higher frequency, a larger communication capacity, a high transmission rate, strong anti-interference ability and easy to realize the integration of communication detection, and is the only new frequency band in the electromagnetic spectrum that has yet to be developed, and the spectrum resources are extremely rich. With the large bandwidth characteristics of the terahertz band, it is enough to support the ultra-high transmission rate and super transmission capacity required by 6G, so the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened the 95GHz-3000GHz band as experimental spectrum for 6G technology research and development in 2020.

Of course, the utilization of terahertz frequency band still needs to be fully explored, based on the current technical capabilities, the effective coverage radius of high-frequency terahertz base station networking is only about 10 meters -50 meters, and the number of base stations required to meet the full coverage of the public network is difficult to count, so 6G research needs to make breakthroughs in new wireless air interface technology to solve the economic cost and physical networking problems of terahertz base station coverage.

Second, the curtain of the global competition for 6G research has opened

As a cutting-edge technology, 6G was first led by the academic community to start research. The University of Oulu, located in finland, a communications powerhouse, took the lead in launching the 6G flagship project of "6Genesis - Wireless Intelligent Society and Ecosystem supporting 6G" in 2018 with the support of the Finnish government, and in March 2019, it invited 70 communication experts from various countries to hold the world's first 6G summit and released the world's first 6G white paper, which played a role in promoting the start of 6G research.

Subsequently, with the gradual clarity of the 6G vision, in order to occupy the commanding heights in 6G research, governments around the world began to carry out strategic layouts for 6G research and development, and the United States became one of the first countries to rush.

Because the 5G deployment in the United States is limited by frequency allocation, there is more interference in the low frequency band below 6GHz used in the world, and it is necessary to commercialize the first millimeter wave, which has also led to the slow development of its 5G. As early as September 2018, there were federal communications commission (FCC) officials who looked forward to 6G technology for the first time in public, proposing that 6G would use terahertz bands, and the capacity of 6G base stations would reach 1,000 times that of 5G base stations. In May 2020, the Telecommunications Industry Solutions Alliance (ATIS) released a 6G action proposal, recommending that the government invest additional R&D funds in 6G core technology breakthroughs and encourage governments and companies to actively participate in the formulation of national spectrum policies. In August 2020, the Trump administration officially approved the experiment of 6G in the United States, and then the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened the 95GHz-300GHz terahertz frequency band as experimental spectrum, officially launching the research and development of 6G technology.

As the first country in the world to realize the commercial use of 5G, South Korea is also one of the first countries to carry out 6G research and development. The Korea Academy of Communications and Information Sciences held a 6G forum in April 2019 to officially announce the start of 6G research; the Ministry of Science and Information Technology (MSIT) of the Republic of Korea released the "Future Mobile Communication R&D Strategy Leading the 6G Era" in August 2020, planning to invest 200 billion won (about 168 million US dollars) in 6G technology research and development in five years to ensure that South Korea becomes the world's first 6G commercial country in 2028.

In order to compete with South Korea, Japan preemptively released the world's first "Outline and Roadmap for 6G Technology Comprehensive Strategic Plan" with 6G as a national development goal and initiative in April and June 2020, proposing to achieve 6G key technology breakthroughs in 2025, officially launch 6G networks in 2030, and Japan's share of 6G technology patents should exceed 10%. As a result, Japan has also become the first country in the world to introduce a national strategy for 6G.

The EU adopts a multinational overall strategic cooperation model to promote 6G research and development, and since the beginning of 2020, it has successively issued a number of relevant strategies including "Shaping Europe's Digital Future", "European New Industrial Strategy", "2030 Digital Guide" and other relevant strategies to promote the development of 6G technology. In January 2021, the European Union launched the 6G flagship project Hexa-X, bringing together 25 enterprises and research institutions, including communication equipment manufacturers Nokia, Ericsson, communication operator Orange, Telefonica and the University of Oulu in Finland, planning to invest an overall of 80 billion euros to build the EU 6G technology development roadmap and comprehensively help the EU improve its competitiveness in global 6G research and development. This is an important step for the EU to bring together key industry stakeholders to advance 6G.

In June 2019, led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the China IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group was established, marking the official launch of 6G research and development in mainland China. The members of the promotion group mainly include the three major operators, communication equipment manufacturers, universities and research institutions, etc., which have become the main platform for aggregating the strength of China's industry, education and research, promoting China's 6G technology research and carrying out international exchanges and cooperation. In November 2019, led by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National 6G Technology Research and Development Promotion Working Group and the Overall Expert Group were established, of which the Promotion Working Group was composed of relevant government departments and was responsible for promoting the implementation of 6G technology research and development; the overall expert group was composed of 37 experts from universities, research institutes and enterprises, mainly responsible for proposing 6G technology research layout suggestions and technical demonstrations, and providing advice and suggestions for major decisions.

Third, mainland 6G research faces external challenges

The global competition for 6G research has been vigorously launched at the national level, and for China, which has achieved global attention in 5G commercialization, there are many challenges to be dealt with in order to continue to maintain its leading position in the future 6G competition, but the most important thing at present is the encirclement and blocking of the United States.

The disadvantages of 5G development have become the biggest driving force for the United States to accelerate 6G research. After the Trump administration officially approved the US 6G experiment in August 2020, in order to accelerate the progress of 6G research, the US Telecommunications Industry Solutions Alliance (ATIS) initiated the establishment of a trade organization dedicated to managing the development of 6G in North America in October of that year , the Next G Alliance. The strategic tasks identified by the alliance mainly include establishing a 6G strategic roadmap, promoting 6G-related policies and budgets, and global promotion of 6G technologies and services, and its ultimate goal is to establish the leadership of the United States in the 6G era.

In order to expand the influence of the Next G Alliance, its organizational members in addition to the US information industry giants, such as Qualcomm, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, Google and communication operators AT&T, Verizon, etc., also absorbed European communications vendors Ericsson and Nokia, as well as South Korea's Samsung and LG, Japan's Sharp, NEC, Docomo, etc., Taiwan's chip giant TSMC is also listed.

However, the Next G Alliance explicitly requires that organizations subject to export, re-export and/or transfer licensing requirements on the U.S. Department of Commerce entity list not be eligible to participate in the alliance, thus excluding Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE in one fell swoop, forming a small circle of 6G cooperation between them and their allies. This is also a continuation of the US communications market to exclude Chinese companies from 5G commercial opportunities and continue to suppress Chinese companies in 6G research.

At the end of 2021, the Next G Alliance announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Korea 5G Forum, announcing that the two organizations will cooperate in depth in discussing the development of a 6G roadmap, global standardization and spectrum, with the aim of seeking more international support for the 6G roadmap they have led. In October 2021, the Next G Alliance submitted a 6G roadmap proposal on the IMT-2030 vision to ITU-R, the radiocommunication sector of the International Telecommunication Union, hoping to influence the development of future global standards for 6G.

At present, terahertz has become an important experimental frequency band for the early research and development of 6G. The National Foundation, nasa and other institutions have been investing heavily in terahertz technology research since the 1990s; the "Terahertz and Perception Fusion Technology Research Center" established by more than 30 American universities has also launched research on wireless technology and terahertz chips in September 2020; therefore, the United States has formed a certain leading edge in the field of high-frequency wireless from the fields of technical foundation, RF hardware and chips. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) first announced in March 2019 that the 95GHz-3000GHz terahertz was opened for 6G experiments, and the NextG Alliance submitted a 6G roadmap proposal to ITU-R, with the aim of transforming the U.S. advantage in terahertz technology into its influence and dominance over global standards for 6G technology.

However, due to the impact of the entity list sanctions of the US Department of Commerce, mainland high-tech enterprises including Huawei and ZTE are not only excluded by the Next G Alliance and do not have the opportunity for technical exchanges, but also are strictly restricted by the US government in terms of related technologies, chips and other imports, which seriously affects the mainland's research and development progress in the field of high-frequency wireless technology. The communication technology standard discourse power recovered in the 5G era may be lost again, and it will fall into a passive beating situation.

Fourth, mainland 6G research needs to overcome internal obstacles

At present, the mainland has built 1.4 million 5G base stations, 5G mobile phone terminal connections of more than 500 million households, in the global market in a leading position, has achieved remarkable achievements, but this has also caused the domestic 6G research for 5G experience path dependence, hindering the innovation and breakthrough of 6G technology.

In June 2021, the Mainland IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group recently released the "6G Overall Vision and Potential Key Technologies White Paper", however, this strategic document issued by the authority to guide the mainland 6G research, but still regards the new spectrum in the 6GHz and below bands as a strategic resource for 6G development, believing that "through re-cultivation, aggregation, sharing and other means, to further improve the efficiency of spectrum use, will provide the most basic ground continuous coverage for 6G." Support 6G to achieve fast, low-cost network deployment"; for the higher frequency bands such as terahertz and visible light that have become the consensus of the industry on 6G and have been put into trials in the United States, they emphasize the limitations of "limited by propagation characteristics and will focus on meeting the short-distance large-capacity needs of specific scenarios", and lightly believe that "these high-frequency bands will also play an important role in scenarios such as perception communication integration and human body domain connectivity".

From the perspective of considering the future construction of the network, the IMT-2030 (6G) promotion group attaches importance to the middle and low frequency bands, although it is reasonable, but from the perspective of leading the research and development of 6G technology, it is inevitable to avoid the suspicion of the United States. To meet the 6G demand for ultra-high-speed, ultra-large capacity spectrum, high-frequency technology is inevitable, the current industry's key topic for 6G technology research is also how to break through the coverage economy of high-frequency band equipment; and the white paper of the IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group will build a large-scale coverage 6G network at the fastest speed as the goal, hoping to continue to rely on network scale to win in the future 6G competition, which is obviously the path dependence on the successful experience of 5G in the mainland.

5G construction in the mainland, First of all, it is planned to build a network in the 3.5GHz and 2.6GHz mid-frequency bands to meet the needs of high-speed and large-bandwidth scenarios, but in the case of lack of 5G applications and high operating costs of 5G equipment, it is turned to planning 2.1GHz and 700Mhz low-frequency band network construction to achieve a larger range of low-cost 5G coverage, so it can complete the construction of 1.4 million 5G base stations in just three years, realizing the global leadership in 5G network construction scale and market leadership for the global 5G industry.

However, with the development of 5G standards to R16, R17, and R18, the demand for high speed and large bandwidth of 5G will eventually be supported and realized by the middle and high frequency bands, and its technical value will be maximized in vertical industry applications, so as 5G evolves forward to 6G, competition will increasingly focus on technical advantages and industrial value, rather than the size of the network scale.

Therefore, if it is because the United States has formed a competitive advantage in terahertz technology, we have to bypass the high-frequency band and emphasize the rapid construction of 6G in the middle and low frequency bands, which is undoubtedly to look at 6G with the primary thinking of 5G, to take 6G as an ordinary connection technology iteration, but to ignore the strategic significance of 6G technology will assume the strategic significance of connecting the physical world and the digital world, such a technical point of view can not play a leading role in global 6G research, and it is difficult to win wide support in the competition of 6G global standards.

In addition to the technical views of the IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group, the leading communications companies in mainland China also have a forward-looking negative attitude towards promoting 6G research. Since the mainland has achieved leadership in 5G standards, domestic enterprises have accumulated a large number of benefits in the 5G patent and 5G market, and prematurely and too quickly promoting the evolution of technical standards to 6G will undoubtedly cause a certain degree of damage to the existing interests of 5G, so the investment in the new generation of technology is generally more negative, and falls into the path dependence of "evolutionary short-sightedness".

Therefore, in the increasingly competitive 6G research track, in the face of the aggressive and enterprising mentality of the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union, and the severe challenge of the United States chasing and blocking, if the mainland industry still stays on the path dependence on 5G experience, there is no doubt that the risk of missing 6G opportunities will be overtaken by people.

V. Mainland 6G competitive strategy recommendations

In the face of the challenges of the United States' advantages in high-frequency technologies such as terahertz, as well as its suppression strategy of blocking mainland enterprises, in order to achieve a leading position in the global competition for 6G research, mainland government departments, research institutions and related enterprises need to improve their sense of crisis, abandon the mentality of falling into path dependence on the success book of 5G commercialization, take action as soon as possible, and make changes from the following three aspects:

1. Further expand opening up in the field of mobile communication market and technology research and development, especially strengthen cooperation with EU enterprises.

In the global 5G industry chain, American companies Qualcomm and Apple have formed a strong competitive advantage in the chip and terminal markets, but the field of communication equipment is mainly occupied by China's Huawei, ZTE and Europe's Ericsson and Nokia, and there is no competitive American enterprise involved. Therefore, in addition to maintaining the advantages of the chip and terminal field in the 6G competition, the Greater goal of the United States is to regain a place in radio frequency products, so its targets are not only Huawei and ZTE in the mainland, but also Ericsson and Nokia in Europe.

In order to enhance and strengthen the competitiveness of EU mobile communication technology in 6G, based on the "Europe 2020 Vision" strategic plan, Nokia, as the lead unit, carried out the EU's first 6G guiding project in the field of communications, Hexa-X, committed to building the EU 6G technology development roadmap; Ericsson organized the EU REINDEER project, mainly researching cellular-free MIMO technology, and committed to building the EU into a center for the development, standardization and final deployment of 6G. In a sense, this is also the existence of the EU's hope to form a counterweight in the Sino-US high-tech confrontation and 6G competition.

6G to develop a unified technical standards and create a global market, the need for multi-party cooperation, the formation of most of the consensus, for the mainland's 6G research, only rely on the cohesion of domestic forces behind closed doors to engage in research and development will have the risk of being marginalized, so to unite more global forces, both can consider the formation of a multinational R & D alliance similar to the United States Next G, you can also refer to the EU's Hexa-X to establish multinational R&D projects, attracting companies and research institutions from all over the world, including EU companies, to participate, Through the close connection between technology and the market, it is possible to break the technological blockade of the United States in 6G research, and to jointly balance the United States in the process of formulating 6G standards in international organizations such as ITU and 3GPP.

2. Domestic communications companies such as Huawei, ZTE, and Xiaomi should have the courage to undertake the 6G mission.

In April 2021, the Mainland Intellectual Property Development Research Center released the "6G Communication Technology Patent Development Status Report", which shows that although China's 6G patent applications have increased rapidly since 2009, significantly exceeding the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea and other countries and regions, and contributing the most to global patent applications, among the top ten applicants in the world, Japan, the United States and South Korea have 3, followed by Japan NEC Corporation, South Korea Daewoo Communications Corporation, Japan's Mitsubishi Electronics Corporation, Korea Telecommunications Research Institute, South Korea's Samsung Electronics, the United States' Hughes Network Systems Company, Japan's NTT Corporation, the United States Qualcomm Corporation and the American Guardian Corporation, while the mainland only China University of Electronic Science and Technology ranked eighth in the world's patent applications. From the perspective of Chinese patent applications alone, the top ten are also domestic universities and scientific research institutions.

This shows that in the global 6G communication technology innovation competition, foreign companies that have lagged behind in 5G have begun to catch up and walk in the forefront of 6G, while the mainland's 6G innovation force is still dominated by universities and scientific research institutions, and Domestic communication equipment manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, ZTE, Xiaomi, Vivo, oppo and other domestic communication equipment manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers that have achieved commercial success in 5G have not yet exerted their strength.

Benefiting from the dividends of the mainland's 5G policy, Huawei and ZTE, which have gained huge market opportunities in the process of 5G network construction and commercialization, have a market share of more than 90% in domestic 5G base stations, and domestic brand mobile phones such as Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo also account for more than 80% of the 5G mobile phone shipments. Most of the current business income of these companies comes from the 5G business, so although each of them has announced that it has launched a technical reserve research for 6G, from the perspective of 6G patent applications, it is not only lagging behind domestic universities and scientific research institutions in the mainland, but also lagging behind Japanese and South Korean companies that hope to achieve a turnaround on 6G.

Therefore, communications companies, including Huawei, ZTE, Xiaomi, etc., should still have a forward-looking awareness and crisis awareness, and should have the courage to undertake the mission of 6G to continue to lead, allocate 6G research and development from the current 5G revenue, carry out 6G research cooperation with the academic community, form a breakthrough in the field of high-frequency technology as soon as possible, and create a competitive advantage of 6G technology.

3. Adjust the national strategic plan and accelerate the promotion of 6G research

The global competition for 6G research has been carried out at the national level, and countries and regions such as the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union have issued 6G national strategies and roadmaps: the United States has approved the 6G terahertz experimental frequency band, Japan plans to open a 6G experimental network at the 2025 Osaka World Expo, and South Korea claims to be the first commercial 6G in 2028; but in the mainland's "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (2021-2025) and 2035 Long-term Goals", The plan to accelerate the construction of new infrastructure" is still stuck in "accelerating the large-scale deployment of 5G networks... As the competent department of the information and communication industry, the "14th Five-Year Plan" information and communication industry development plan formulated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology only takes "carrying out the research and development of 6G basic theory and key technologies" as the development goal of the next five years.

In contrast, the mainland's top-level design of the 6G roadmap is significantly more conservative than that of the United States, Japan and South Korea, according to such a plan, the mainland will launch 6G experimental networks and commercial networks in the future time or will lag far behind the United States, Japan and South Korea, and it is likely to lose the opportunity and status to continue to lead the world on 6G.

Therefore, in the face of the strategic competition between the United States, Japan and South Korea on 6G, the mainland should make corresponding adjustments to the national strategic plan for 6G development as soon as possible, clearly put forward the requirements for accelerating 6G research, drive the domestic 6G industry to get rid of the path dependence on 5G success, promote domestic 6G research to achieve breakthroughs in high-frequency technologies and products such as terahertz, and launch 6G terahertz frequency band experiments in a timely manner to ensure that 6G continues to lead the realization of global goals.

【Conclusion】

At the end of the article, the State Council issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy", in the section on "Optimizing and Upgrading Digital Infrastructure", the description of 6G in terms of "accelerating the construction of information network infrastructure", on the basis of "forward-looking layout of the sixth generation of mobile communication (6G) network technology reserves", a new reference of "increasing support for 6G technology research and development and actively participating in promoting 6G international standardization work" was added.

This is a new requirement for "6G technology research and development" at the government level, through "increasing support" to promote the strategic layout of the mainland communication industry 6G research, through "active participation" to promote 6G international standardization, so as to continue to maintain the mainland's leading role and status in the next generation of technology evolution in the mobile communication industry.

Resources:

White Paper on the Overall Vision and Potential Key Technologies for 6G, IMT2030 (6G) Promotion Group

6G Communications White Paper, Nokia Bell Labs

"6G Global Progress and Development Outlook White Paper", CCID Think Tank