6G is coming! Well, not anytime soon but it is expected to be keep the world connected by the year 2028.
Samsung has released its 6G white paper, providing details on what can be expected.
We are still waiting for 5G that is expected in mid-2020, but "it’s not too early to start preparing for 6G.“
“While 5G commercialization is still in its initial stage, it’s never too early to start preparing for 6G because it typically takes around 10 years from the start of research to commercialization of a new generation of communications technology,” said Sunghyun Choi, Head of the Advanced Communications Research Center.
“We’ve already launched the research and development of 6G technologies by building upon the experience and ability we have accumulated from working on multiple generations of communications technology, including 5G. Going forward, we are committed to leading the standardization of 6G in collaboration with various stakeholders across industry, academia and government fields.”
“Samsung defines three categories of requirements that have to be met to realize 6G services – performance, architectural and trustworthiness requirements.”
Samsung is set to begin 6G research in "full-scale" this year, said Choi. It also aims to have started extensive work on defining and developing technical standards in 2021.
In the white paper, Samsung expects that the completion of the 6G standard and its earliest commercialization date could be as early as 2028. Mass commercialisation may occur around 2030, with humans and machines (yes, machines) being the main users of 6G.
Examples of Samsung defined 6G performance requirements:
A peak data rate of 1,000 Gbps (gigabits per second)
Air latency less than 100 microseconds (or 0.1milliseconds)
Which amounts to around 50 times the peak data rate and one-tenth the latency of 5G, in an ideal world.
It boasts twice the energy efficiency of 4G.
The question on everyone’s mind is: How can 6G be used in the near-future?
Holograms and 16K VR are just two of the ways. You thought of a sci-fi movie, didn’t you?
Samsung provides use cases for the tech, including truly immersive XR (AR/VR/mixed reality), jumping from 4K tech to 16K VR streaming. This VR streaming requires downlink speeds of up to 0.9Gbps. Needless to say, current 5G connections can’t provide this speed.
Samsung says streaming AR to an 8K display currently requires 55.3Mbps, and believes “truly immersive” AR requires 0.44Gbps speeds.
Samsung also suggested a hologram display over a 6.7-inch mobile device display with 11.1 Gigapixels form-factor require data rates of ‘at least 0.58 Tbps’.
Another sci-fi use of 6G technology will be ‘Digital Replica/Digital Twin’ technology. This technology will be able to replicate people, devices, places, and more. According to Samsung, this will require speeds of several Tbps.
Samsung is not the only firm looking into 6G, but the detail in the white paper is significantly more than previous acknowledgments of 6G research from Nokia and Ericsson.
IOL TECH