6G awaiting its turn in Hype Queue: A underdog with a great impact on your digital strategy!
6G has a vision of data transmission peak speeds in Tbps with ultra-low latency even in ultra-dense connections with high precision positioning with ultra-reliable and safe connections that ensure low power consumption and high energy efficiency with ubiquitous intelligence.
Still in its infancy, countries, key industry leaders and standardization bodies around the world have announced their plans for 6G research, test beds and sandboxes.
Even though there is a significant improvement foreseen/seen from 4G to 5G, the following challenges among others inspire the KPIs and further development of the architecture for 6G deployments:
- Challenges in global communications of maritime and satellite communications leading to seamless connectivity between space, air, ground and sea
- Even though 5G KPI sets out to 10 Gbps as peak data transmission rate, the user experienced speeds are estimated to range from 100 – 500 Mbps. Whereas 6G is set with a vision to have Tbps of peak rates with upto 10Gbps of user experienced speeds
- Fully automatic production lines that forms the back bone for Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 will require ultra-dense connections to the tune of up to 10 to the power of 8 devices/sq. km
- Energy consumption is another issue where the End-to-End energy consumption along with that of the applications also need to decrease by more than a denominator of 100
The 6G vision and 6G KPIs thus set out by the forums thus infer that the key applications of 6G will cater to strengthening the eMBB, uRLLC and mMMTC use cases and developing them further to achieve the massive potential of ubiquitous connectivity, intelligence and communications.
Along with new set of applications that will span across long distance and high mobility communications, integrated network for space-air-ground-sea, ultra-low power consumption applications and so on.
While extensive research is being conducted worldwide on defining the network architecture, currently there seems to be lack of standardized 6G network architecture. It is envisaged that the network architecture will evolve on the following:
Build upon and enhance the current 5G architectural standards that will cover:
- Enhanced network slicing
- Enhanced services-based architecture
- Enhanced software defined networking
- Enhanced network function virtualization
- RAN-Core Convergence
- Autonomous networks and self-managing
- Digital twin based networks
New 6G Specific themes for network architecture:
- Fully decoupled RAN
- 3D multi-integrated networks (UAV, Non-terrestrial, maritime, satellite)
- Integrated Non terrestrial networks
- Ultra dense homogeneous networks
- Multilateral trust networks
- Multi-layer ubiquitous computing
- Integration of cloud, edge and fog computing
- Cell free architecture
It can however be clearly deduced that 6G is being set with great expectations and there is substantial direction in terms of how this technology impacts the industry, CSPs, Network Operators, MVNOs, ISVs/OEMs, hyper-scalers and their 10–15-year roadmaps.
Strategy function of an organization, ahis a function that needs to be ahead at-least 10-15 years of current operational and its competitors.
Business leaders and first movers have time and again proved how they have built the competitive advantage by planning ahead of competition.
Are you ahead? Do you have a strategy already to leverage 6G?
About the Author:
Dr. Jigna Srivastava, founder of DT Simplified, is a renowned thought leader in the space of telco digital transformation. She brings more than two decades of industry and consulting experience. Her expertise is in devising end-to-end digital strategies and enterprise architecture for telcos spanning across IT, Digital B/OSS, Cloud, and Network Automation. She has been instrumental in defining and driving the adoption of digital strategies, and building digital architectures, and has been instrumental in large transformation programs to drive innovative digital business models. She has also devised the DT Simplified® framework, which is an extension of her Doctoral research model outlining the “Antecedents of digital transformation and their impact on the business performance” for a successful digital transformation of telecom services providers. She also teaches subjects like Information Systems Management, Business Intelligence, Data Analytics and Digital Technologies as a Visiting Professor in leading post graduate management colleges/universities in Mumbai, India.