Electrical Equipment / Components & Telecoms

From 2020 to the present, when China is building a large-scale 5G network, some international companies have set their sights on 6G research and development. Terahertz technology and Starlink technology are regarded by some as key technologies in the 6G era. This year, the global 5G large-scale commercialization has entered the fast lane. According to statistics, the number of global 5G commercial networks has reached 176. According to the ten-year development rule of mobile communication, the time to start 6G research is ripe. Recently, the Chinese IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group held the first 6G public seminar. In the two-day meeting, is the main technology discussed by everyone terahertz? What scenarios is the goal of 6G to solve?

Do 5G before 6G

At present, China's 5G development is remarkable. One million 5G base stations have been built, and the quality of network coverage has been guaranteed. 5G terminal users exceed 400 million, and it is also the world's largest user group, accounting for more than 80% of the world's total. There have been more than 10,000 5G application innovation cases, and both the number and innovation are in the first echelon in the world.

However, the difficulties encountered in the process of 5G leading the transformation of mobile communications from the consumer Internet to the industrial Internet are also obvious. Wen Ku, vice chairman and secretary-general of the China Communications Standards Association, said: “As one of the first countries in the world to commercialize 5G, China has no advanced experience to learn from, and no clear path to refer to in terms of technological standard evolution and integrated application promotion. All parties need to cooperate closely and work together."

Starting 6G research in this context cannot be separated from the reality of 5G development.

Wen Ku said that the development of 5G converged applications is a long-term, arduous and complex "battle" that requires the concerted efforts of all parties to play well in team competitions. When 5G empowers vertical industry applications, it not only needs to be closely connected with industry-specific technologies, experience, knowledge, etc., but also requires companies to have a high digital foundation and lean management level, and at the same time, it must be based on current version standards and industry maturity. Based on comprehensive considerations, there are complex and difficult challenges, which require all parties in the industry to collaboratively explore the path of application innovation, and continuously summarize successful experience and promote it vigorously.

"In addition, 5G technical standards will continue to evolve according to application requirements. The current research plan for 5G enhanced technical standards-5G Advanced has been launched. There are opinions in the industry that high-definition video upload, VR/XR and holographic communication, high-precision environmental perception, etc. The new application requirements will stimulate the three new functions of uplink ultra-bandwidth, bandwidth real-time interaction, and communication perception fusion. Together with eMBB and MMTC, they will build a hexagon for 5G Advanced capabilities."

The development of the mobile communication industry has obvious characteristics of inter-generational evolution based on the previous generation of networks, and is a gradual development process. For countries around the world, the basis for the development of 6G is to first develop 5G and 5G Advanced.

From the perspective of network construction and deployment, 5G network deployment and commercialization in China and South Korea are currently relatively leading, but 5G network construction and commercialization in other countries are gradually catching up. The large-scale commercialization of 5G globally will take some time, and the foundation for 6G development still needs to be consolidated.

From the perspective of industrial technology cultivation, countries all over the world regard terahertz as an important technological evolution direction for 6G. Terahertz requires a bandwidth of more than 1GB and a large-throughput analog-to-digital conversion signal processing capability, which poses great industrial challenges.

"In fact, the millimeter wave industry is also facing similar problems to be solved. Everyone knows that millimeter waves used to have a bandwidth of 100MB in the world, but with such a good spectrum, the bandwidth of 100MB appears to be narrower. We propose 200MB~ 400MB bandwidth, but stumbling can only achieve 200MB, and surrendered at 400MB. If it achieves 1GB, everyone can imagine what it looks like." Wenku said, "Therefore, the prerequisite for developing terahertz is to use millimeter waves. Cultivation is mature, otherwise it’s like a child hasn’t stabilized before starting to run. For new technologies such as synaesthetic integration, communication and artificial intelligence integration, they can also be introduced and cultivated in 5G Advanced in advance, and continue to clarify the business scenarios for their subsequent 6G development and evolution. Lay the foundation, repair the bridge, and pave the road."

6G needs to be smarter

From 1G to 4G, the connection goal is the mobile communication between people; the connection goal of 5G is to realize the interconnection of people, machines, and things. Zhang Ping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, believes that the vision of 6G is to connect people, machines, and things more intelligently. He uses "spirit" to describe this level of intelligence.

"Society has developed to today, and artificial intelligence has become a methodology. We may use this method to reform society." Zhang Ping said, "Before 5G, it was the interconnection of humans, machines and things, which is the interaction of human social space, information space, and physical space. In the process, we will add a part in the future. If there is an increase, it may be the wisdom space or the consciousness space. In addition to these, the "spirit" is added, which is the intelligent connection of all things."

Zhang Ping said that "spirit" represents the digital twin of the human body, and it is also called a human intelligent assistant, including holographic and all-sensory businesses. This means that human consciousness is reflected in the communication business. The "spirit" with high intelligence may understand the world and humans better than humans, and can make some decisions on behalf of humans. Of course, such decisions may be pre-determined or advanced. , Needs to be tested, the perception, coding, transmission and evaluation of subjective information will become the key factors to achieve high-quality services. The processing and interaction of 6G should have a new dimension, that is, our cognitive ability, introspective ability and decision-making ability will rise to a new stage. The composition of network intelligence and the endogenous description of intelligence will exceed human control and imagination.

To realize this 6G vision, Zhang Ping believes that the current large-scale development of computing power and the further realization of high-precision positioning will provide support for realistic capabilities. In addition, air interface technology, communication system design and other aspects need to be adjusted.

"At present, we are focusing on channel estimation, MIMO channel detection, encoding and decoding, and automatic pattern recognition in complex scenarios. The problem that needs to be solved is the acquisition of data sets, and at the same time, some good AI algorithms should be formed. We should continue to work hard on universality. "Zhang Ping said, "We are now starting to study 6G. In fact, many of the currently proposed 6G technologies can also be used in 5G networks. Now 5G Advanced has increased from the original three scenarios to six scenarios. The most important thing is to achieve synesthesia. Integration, this direction will continue in the future, the technical challenges are signal waveform design, multi-dimensional signal processing, perception-assisted communication, integrated portable synesthesia design and so on."

Zhang Ping proposed that in solving 6G complex network information, we should pay attention to the study of semantic communication, so that the network can convey people's intentions. In terahertz communications, the focus is on terahertz ultra-large-scale MIMO and smaller ion antenna units. The challenge is that it is easily blocked and transmission is easily interrupted.

In addition, dynamic spectrum sharing technology, intelligent super-surface technology, cellular-free massive MIMO technology, NOMA technology, new generation waveform system design, and new generation channel coding technology are all potential 6G technologies that have attracted attention.

6G wants to realize the meta-universe?

In June of this year, the IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group released the "6G Overall Vision and Potential Key Technology White Paper", specifically proposing the vision of intelligent connection of all things and digital twins. "5G is the interconnection of people and people. 6G has gradually added more intelligent bodies. At the same time, from the interconnection of all things to the realization of the intelligent connection of all things, more realization of the symbiotic development of the physical world and the virtual world." IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Team Wang Zhiqin, president and vice president of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said, "Recently, people have mentioned the concept of meta-universe. In fact, it is also the process of more interaction between the virtual world and the physical world and the coexistence of the future."

The future 6G business scenarios are divided into the following trends: immersion, intelligence, globalization, and eight business application scenarios. It can be seen that the trend of intelligence is very obvious, and at the same time, more perception functions and virtual worlds are added. With more interaction in the physical world, the communication range develops from the earth to the space and the sky to cover the whole area.

China Mobile has proposed "4G changes life, 5G changes society". Faced with the design of 6G vision, Huang Yuhong, vice president of China Mobile Communications Research Institute, said: "We boldly propose the vision of '6G reshape the world'."

"In the future, we will not only have the physical world, but also the digital world. On the one hand, it will be a twin world to the physical world, and on the other hand, it will evolve into the so-called meta-universe and parallel world. It may be that this meta-universe is not only for the real world. Simulation and simulation, and more importantly, have already undergone a lot of changes, and they have also developed interactively with the physical world and virtual world, which has a very large driving force for the development of 6G." Huang Yuhong said.

Huang Yuhong believes that it is now in the early stage of 6G technology research and development, and it is possible to conduct research on a variety of technologies. At present, the initial focus is on six major areas: extreme multi-dimensional capabilities, three-dimensional coverage, intelligent network distribution, intelligent simplicity, endogenous wisdom, and security. Endogenous credibility, operation twin autonomy.

"6G research has been extensively carried out around the world, and is currently entering a critical window of research and development. Of course, the industry’s research on 6G is by no means for research purposes. There are strong driving forces behind it, including the needs of digital twins and meta-universes, including large Data, artificial intelligence, and the needs of DOICT in the industrial field." Huang Yuhong said.