Industry observation | 6G technology promotion ideas are becoming clearer the next 3-5 years into a strategic window

Financial Associated Press (Shenzhen, reporter Fu Jing; editor Liu Yan) news, March 22-24 global 6G technology conference was held, 6G promotion path is becoming clearer. The reporter of the Financial Associated Press learned from a number of industry insiders that with the large-scale commercial use of 5G networks, the global 6G research and development layout has been launched, the head enterprises of the industrial chain have been preemptively planning, and the industry generally predicts that 6G will be commercially used around 2030.

As Xiang Libin, vice minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said at the Global 6G Technology Conference, "6G is in the early stage of incubation, the vision needs have not yet been determined, the key technologies have not formed an industry consensus, and related research is in the stage of a hundred schools of thought." 6G technology academic research towards an industrial vision requires a process, and 2022 will be a key year in this process. ”

Commercial use is expected in 2030 The next 3-5 years is a strategic window period

At the Global 6G Technology Conference, multinational universities and scientific research institutions, telecom operators, and equipment manufacturers exchanged ideas and latest achievements on 6G research and development, 13 white papers involving 6G, millimeter wave, mobile ultra-high-definition video and other topics were released, 10 white papers on 6G themes involved 6G capability matrix and performance index level, digital twin, next-generation protocol stack 4.0, terahertz, multi-access, intelligent hypersurface, zero power consumption, quantum information, terminal friendliness, intelligent rail transit, etc.

A number of industry insiders told the Financial Associated Press, "According to the IMT-2030 (6G) goal, 6G commercialization will be achieved around 2030, and it is expected that the corresponding standardization work will start around 2025." "China Mobile (600941. Yi Zhiling, chief scientist of SH) Research Institute, also made it clear at the Global 6G Technology Conference that the next 3-5 years will be a strategic window period for 6G key technology breakthroughs.

In fact, in terms of industry, operators and communication companies are accelerating their layout in recent years.

For example, in terms of operators, China Mobile has put forward its vision and key technologies through a number of research reports and white papers; SH) Network Technology Research Institute announced a vigorous study of 6G terahertz communication technology and cooperated with ZTE (000063. SZ) signed a joint strategic cooperation agreement for 6G.

In addition, Huawei has confirmed the start of 6G network research in Ottawa, Canada, Ren Zhengfei also said in an interview with the media that "Huawei's 6G research leads the world"; Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui also announced that it has launched pre-research and reserve of 6G-related technologies, explored potential 6G key technologies such as terahertz communication, orbital angular momentum, very large-scale antenna system, very high-throughput codec, and space-earth integrated communication network, and formulated a 6G technology prototype research and development promotion plan." ”

According to the financial associated press reporter, a number of A-share listed companies have disclosed their 6G layout. Hytera, a leading enterprise in the field of special communications, 002583. SZ) relevant person in charge said in an interview with the Financial Associated Press reporter that the public network due to the large volume of users, high investment in industry research and development, technology iteration update speed is faster, in a leading position; private network communication and public network communication technology is connected, the company continues to track and learn from the public network technology, the public network and private network deep integration; 5G network construction, application is still deployed to advance, but the industry, academia and research community has begun to discuss 6G related technical directions, whether public network communication or private network communication, "use a generation, build a generation, research and development generation" It is a common law of the development of the communication industry.

It is reported that in November 2019, the 6G technology research and development promotion working group and the overall expert group were established, and the mainland 6G technology research and development work was officially launched. Now 6G has been written into the top-level national documents. In January this year, the State Council issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy", which mentioned that the forward-looking layout of 6G network technology reserves, increase support for 6G technology research and development, and actively participate in promoting 6G international standardization. Xiao Yaqing, minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, also said during the two sessions this year, "In the process of 5G development, it is necessary for all walks of life to form a synergy and mutual integration, and at the same time consider the deployment of technology research in the direction of 6G evolution." ”

The idea of promoting is becoming clearer and the technical challenges remain

During the Global 6G Technology Conference, Liu Yulin, a first-level inspector of the Department of Information and Communication Development of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, pointed out that the current 6G development is in a critical period of vision demand formation, in addition to focusing on vision and demand research, deepening international exchanges, and coordinating 5G and 6G development, Liu Yulin clearly stated that he would "accelerate key technological innovation and lay the foundation for 6G development technology".

According to the observation of the reporter of the Financial Associated Press, the current industry's thinking on the promotion of a number of 6G technologies is becoming clearer. For example, in the aspect of millimeter wave and terahertz, the participating experts believe that the use of millimeter wave, terahertz technology is an indispensable path to achieve large bandwidth at the current level of technology, while each generation of mobile communication evolution will develop to a higher frequency, so millimeter wave and terahertz will play a greater role; spectrum sharing coexistence, the future meta-universe, space-earth integration network, Internet of Vehicles, industrial Internet and other services will put forward extremely high requirements for spectrum resources, ZTE technology pre-research chief Engineer Zhao Yajun believes that in the 6G era, The surge in wireless traffic and the shortage of spectrum resources have become the consensus of the industry.

Looking forward to 6G, Zhang Ping, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, believes that the communication indicators of 6G will be 10-100 times higher than 5G, and will achieve high-precision positioning at the centimeter level. "1G-4G pursues a simple communication rate, 5G in the large-scale based communication and reliability, latency put forward requirements, is the improvement of the surface; the future 6G is the improvement of the body, will expand the communication space, to achieve the integration of ground and satellite communications, air, space, space and sea integration, 6G will move towards the full integration of human-machine intelligence, virtual combination, wisdom emerge of ubiquitous wisdom and simple network."

However, the Financial Associated Press reporter noted that Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chairman of the Future Mobile Communication Forum, talked about the ten points of rational thinking about 6G, including "ultra-broadband is not a highlight of 6G", "meta-universe is difficult to become a 6G fulcrum", "the integration of air-earth-sea communication is a major selling point of 6G" and so on. In terms of the metaverse, Wu Hequan believes that "the metacosm needs 6G, but the current business model has no fundamental changes relative to social media and AR/VR, and it is a niche market, not the just need for 6G"; in terms of the integration of air-earth-sea communication, "the integration of air-earth-sea communication is not realized because 6G has not been born, mainly because low-orbit satellites have not formed global coverage, but it can be used as a selling point of 6G, through the research of 6G with hot space-sea communication integration." ”

A number of industry insiders told the Financial Associated Press reporter that the industry is still in the stage of research and concept formation of vision needs, related technologies are still being explored, and the exploration of many technologies needs to be more specific.

The relevant person in charge of Hytera told reporters, "At present, 6G technology is still in the preliminary research stage, and it is still a long time before formulating standard specifications, defining network architecture, and planning industry product forms." Huang Yuhong, president of China Mobile Research Institute, also said, "6G will simultaneously expand wireless coverage at high speed, low latency, high reliability and high density, facing great challenges, and it is necessary to consider multi-band converged coverage technology." ”