With the acceleration of 5G network construction, related applications have begun to blossom everywhere, reaching thousands of industries. According to the development rhythm of the mobile communication industry of "use a generation, build a generation, and develop a generation", the industry generally predicts that 6G will be commercially used around 2030.
As an industry event in the field of 6G, the second "Global 6G Technology Conference" will be held in Nanjing from March 22 to March 24, 2022. Bi Qi, chairman of the Program Committee of the Global 6G Technology Conference, chief expert of China Telecom and academician of Bell Labs, said in an exclusive interview with C114 that at present, countries have issued many white papers on the 6G vision, and 6G technology views are diverse and dazzling, one of the reasons is that the current vision and key technologies have attributed the aspirations and potential technologies of the next generation to the next generation.
"The wish is good, but next, how to identify the vision of real commercial value, accelerate the research and development of related key technologies, and make them practically deployed during the 6G period is an important task of scientific research in the next few years." Becky said that in summary, the current vision of 6G includes instantaneous speed, three-dimensional ubiquitous, synaesthesia multi-dimensional, intelligent endogenous, intelligent and simple integration, safe and credible, green sharing, flexible openness.
In response to the realization of these visions, researchers have proposed high-frequency millimeter wave and terahertz, space-earth-sea satellite connection, high-frequency multi-dimensional sensory interconnection, intelligent network semantic communication, cloud-network fusion computing network, security endogenous trustworthiness and reliability, intelligent energy-saving cost improvement, and various network virtualization technologies. In Beech's view, through these technologies, the application of 6G will be on a higher level than 5G overall.
Instantaneous speed, synaesthesia multi-dimensional
As we all know, in the evolution of any generation of mobile communications, the first to be developed is basically large-bandwidth services, and 6G is no exception. Beech introduced that in most 6G vision white papers, the peak rate expectation of 6G is 1T bits, but according to the current 5G experience, 6G will also have a wide coverage and hot spots. Specifically, the peak rate of wide coverage is expected to be in dozens of Gbits, and in hotspot areas, it may reach hundreds of Gbits. The expected value of 1T bits, most likely, may need to be seen in the laboratory.
If you follow the above peak rate, and summarize the current monthly traffic of about 10GB, as well as the monthly traffic of 5G hundreds of GB of experience data, by the 6G era, the monthly traffic will reach several TB, that is, the daily traffic exceeds 100 GB. Beech said that in other words, the current year's traffic is daily traffic in the 6G era. In addition, the current system response is sub-millisecond, and at 6G, it may be less than the millisecond level.
At the same time, with 6G, the popular two-dimensional short video will be replaced by a multi-dimensional immersive experience. However, pointed out that according to the current forecast of 6G monthly traffic, even in the 6G era, the traffic required for holographic communication is expected to exhaust the daily quota in a few seconds. Therefore, holographic communication and equal-size digital twins are difficult to become mainstream applications for consumers in the 6G era.
Table 1*: 6G applications and their corresponding traffic consumption
*Quoted from IEEE Communication Magazine, January 2022, p. 68.
Three-dimensional ubiquitous, flexible and open
From 1G-5G are wireless communication networks deployed on land, to 6G, the wide coverage of air, earth and sea has become one of the hot spots in research. Bi qi pointed out that one of the visions of 6G is to achieve the integration and coordinated development of various networks such as low-orbit satellites, ground networks, other non-ground network nodes and platforms, build an integrated network covering air, sky, earth and sea, and achieve seamless coverage of air, space and sea, including the ocean, desert Gobi, forest grassland, mountainous areas, remote villages, and mobile platforms such as ships, underwater vehicles and aircraft and spacecraft.
Beech said that in this way, we can break the barriers of global communication network interconnection, eliminate the digital divide between regions, support the global ubiquitous wide-area access of air, space, and sea, provide a communication experience of pan-terminal, pan-connection, pan-sensory and pan-application, and realize the true global mobile Internet.
For the expectation of wide coverage of 6G, Musk's low-orbit satellite "Starlink" has played a certain stimulating role. However, Hatch pointed out that musk's current "starlink" is to receive and transmit signals through satellite pots, and its target user base is also very different from mobile communications. Whether 6G can break through the problem of link loss and business model, connect StarLink to mobile phones during 6G without the need for satellite pot antennas, and how many 6G users are willing to bear the cost of satellite services, the current challenge is still very large.
Of course, the wide coverage of 6G is far from enough to rely on low-orbit satellites. 6G will be deployed at high frequencies, the industry has basically reached a consensus, so the use of high-frequency characteristics to perceive the location, shape, etc., and combined with communication, the formation of three-dimensional services, become a popular research direction, terahertz has become a hot object. However, in Biqi's view, the accuracy of high-frequency sensing technology, whether it can develop and mature during the 6G period, and whether it can find valuable applications all require scientific research investment and great efforts.
In addition, one of the difficulties of high-frequency meshing is the deterioration of coverage. Therefore, 6G systems are expected to employ multi-frequency networking, ultra-large-scale antennas, and intelligent reflective surfaces to improve coverage. In addition, Bi Qi introduced that the P-RAN distributed network architecture proposed by China Telecom is also expected to become a key technology to enhance coverage.
It is worth mentioning that the three-dimensional ubiquitous, seamless coverage of the 6G network provides imagination space for richer application scenarios, which also determines that the 6G network must be malleable and open, in order to understand and adapt to various differentiated needs and empower thousands of industries. Therefore, the network can orchestrate on demand, deploy on demand, auto scaling on demand, and realize intelligent dynamic routing of user traffic. Through the network orchestration function, it quickly responds to the performance requirements of different services on the network, and efficiently, reliably, and intelligently conducts service grooming according to the service characteristics.
Intelligent endogenous, intelligent and simple integration
In the 5G era, the industry is exploring the application of AI in the field of mobile communications, and 3GPP has also defined related research topics. Therefore, with the widespread application of AI, the use of AI in all aspects of communication has become one of the fashionable directions of 6G. However, Bi Qi frankly said that at present, it is still a situation of thunder and rain, and there is still a long way to go in scientific research.
Beech introduced that the current progress is mainly at the high-level system and application level.
According to the user's business characteristics, adaptively match the best network resources, allocate schemes and wireless parameter configuration sets, ensure user service quality while improving system energy efficiency, or use AI technology to achieve network performance, user trajectory prediction, realize network self-tuning, realize wireless resource management, mobility control, service guidance, network energy saving and other intelligent control. China Telecom has made some progress in the field of combining AI and mobile communications, such as applying AI technology to the control of base station energy consumption, which has greatly saved the power consumption of base stations.
Another direction is the new network architecture. The 6G network will make full use of the communication, computing and perception capabilities of network nodes, and enable the 6G network to endogenously support various AI applications through distributed learning, group intelligence collaboration, and cloud edge-end integrated algorithm deployment. The future 6G network will shift from "intelligent addition" to "intelligent endogenous", building a closed loop that realizes perception, analysis and feedback, and provides ubiquitous intelligent services.
In terms of the wireless physical layer at the bottom, the expected gain is still a large temperature difference from the hype. The performance of 6G needs to be improved by more than 10 times compared with 5G, and how much contribution AI applications can provide is not optimistic at present. Judging from the progress of the current physical layer, target-oriented special communication and semantic communication are a new direction of AI in communication applications, and are given higher expectations. However, whether this direction can be matured and applied during the 6G period is still unknown.
Speaking of network architecture, said that China Telecom is taking the lead in undertaking the 6G network architecture research project of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China, and simplifying the network architecture through intelligence and integrating computing power is one of the directions of China Telecom's efforts in 6G. At the same time, China Telecom has been adhering to the integration of cloud and network for many years, and is committed to building a cloud network operating system, in accordance with the three principles of network resources according to cloud needs, network scheduling moves with the cloud, and network and cloud integration deployment, to achieve "where the cloud is, where the network is deployed".
In addition, through the P-RAN architecture, the combination of cellular networks and near-domain networks to develop into a distributed network architecture is also a new trend in 6G network architecture, and the integration of cloud networks is further promoted into a computing power network that spans clouds, networks, edges and ends. Bi Qi introduced that in the research of computing power networks, China Telecom has successfully set up projects in ITU and promoted the formulation of international standards for computing power networks and achieved phased results.
Secure and trustworthy, green sharing
In the era of digital economy, mobile communication networks have become a key information infrastructure for building a social economy, and security and credibility are an inevitable requirement and basic feature of mobile networks. In view of the introduction of new services, new architectures, new technologies, and changes in the security situation, 6G security will evolve in the direction of on-demand definition, endogenous support, trust enhancement, autonomous defense, intelligent decision-making, and collaborative control, etc., to adapt to the security needs of complex services and flexible networks, and to meet the security requirements of all parties.
At the same time, with the rise of the global carbon neutral movement, green and sharing will be an inevitable trend in the development of the communications industry, and will also become one of the goals of the evolution of 6G networks. In view of the requirements of green communication, the 6G network will focus on key technologies such as multi-access convergence, low-energy sensing devices for pan-terminals, intelligently enabled wireless air interfaces, intelligent and efficient network architectures, and intelligent energy savings in infrastructure.
Beech pointed out that at present, countries around the world have begun to actively promote 6G-related technology research, and the US Telecom Industry Solution Alliance (ATIS) has gathered dozens of global technology giants such as Qualcomm, Samsung, Ericsson, and Apple to establish the "Next G" alliance.
"While no Chinese company has yet been invited to join the 'Next G' alliance, the success of the mobile communications industry depends on the development and growth of the global industrial chain. The formation of a global unified communication standard is a necessary condition for the success of 6G. Bi qi said that China Telecom will unswervingly promote the formulation and development of unified international standards and make due contributions to the globalization of 6G and the community of destiny of the world.
C114 communication network Water easy