5G mobile connectivity promises to be 100 times faster than current 4G speeds, and we are still a couple of years away from widely migrating to 5G networks.
This year, mobile networks have slowed on 5G network rollouts, but that’s not stopping Samsung from exploring the next frontier of communication: 6G.
Whereas 5G requirements mainly focused on performance aspects, Samsung defines three categories of requirements that have to be met to realize 6G services – performance, architectural and trustworthiness requirements. Examples of 6G performance requirements are a peak data rate of 1,000 Gbps (gigabits per second) and air latency less than 100 microseconds (μs), 50 times the peak data rate and one-tenth the latency of 5G. A comparison of key performance requirements between 6G and 5G is shown in the diagram below.
When to expect 6G
6G is expected to launch commercially in 2030. 6G is being developed in response to the increasingly distributed radio access network (RAN ) and the desire to take advantage of the terahertz (Thz) spectrum to increase capacity, lower latency and improve spectrum sharing efficiency. While some early discussions have taken place to define 6G, research and development activities will start in earnest in 2020. Many of the problems associated with deploying millimeter wave radio for 5G new radio are expected to be solved in time for network designers to address the challenges of 6G.
What 6G will look like
It's expected that 6G wireless sensing solutions will selectively use different frequencies to measure absorption and adjust frequencies accordingly. This is possible because atoms and molecules emit and absorb electromagnetic radiation at characteristic frequencies and the emission and absorption frequencies are the same for any given substance.
6G will have big implications for many government and industry solutions in public safety and critical asset protection such as:
- Threat detection
- Health monitoring
- Feature and facial recognition
- Decision making (in areas like law enforcement and social credit systems)
- Air quality measurements
- Gas and toxicity sensing
Improvements in these fields would also enable improvements in emerging technology such as smart cities, autonomous vehicles and virtual reality.
