6G will merge human, physical and digital realms 

By: Peter Vetter, President, Nokia Bell Labs Core Research; and Theodore Rappaport, David Lee/Ernst Weber Professor, New York University and Founding Director, NYU WIRELESS October 25, 2024

Collected at: https://www.rcrwireless.com/20241025/6g/6g-will-merge-human-physical-and-digital-realms-that-matters-reader-forum

We are standing on the precipice of a technological change that will fundamentally reshape the way we live, work and play. The advent of 6G era technology promises to blur the lines between physical and digital realms in ways that were once the stuff of science fiction.

The emerging killer app of fixed wireless access has brought millions of new customers to experience the potential of 5G cellular to deliver high speed internet in the home or office. Despite the rapid roll-out and success of 5G for mobile broadband services, the slow adoption of 5G for industrial automation and lack of additional revenues has led skeptics to question whether touting 6G’s potential is overly optimistic. 

That cynicism is misplaced.

Expected to become commercially available around 2030, 6G will enable digital – physical fusion at a much larger scale and at a higher level of sophistication than possible with 5G. Fueled by an open infrastructure architecture that will encourage collaborative business models and new ways of monetization, 6G will provide a new, better ecosystem that can help us achieve the societal goals of our aspirations. The race to 6G is on, and whoever wins will lead the next global industrial revolution.

Far from being a mere upgrade in speed and reduced latency to our current telecommunications infrastructure, 6G promises to substantially change our relationship with technology. 6G networks won’t just be AI-assisted like 5G. They will be AI-native – incorporating AI into their design, deployment and end-to-end operations. The 6G framework will allow us to reap the benefits of this fast-evolving new technology to its fullest for the next decade to come.

Combined with the improved performance capabilities, 6G networks will bring much needed sustainability and efficiency to networking infrastructure and accelerate automation, security and safety to improve people’s lives.

6G offers us an opportunity to add new network architectural capabilities in order to create more value out of the network, turning it into a central pillar 

of our future digital economy. The network will function as a platform, enabling the AI and the cloud to work together in unison with 6G infrastructure.

The far superior performance and capabilities of 6G networks – expected to be 10x times faster than current 5G technology thanks to expanded spectrum, with 50% less energy consumption, reduced latency and higher device density – will enable several compelling use cases on top of enhanced reliability and wider network coverage.

These gains will encourage further adoption for smart homes, smart city infrastructure and smart enterprises.

AI-enabled 6G networks will allow for far more societal automation: autonomous transportation systems, advanced healthcare solutions, better logistics for food and materials, advanced agriculture and public safety to name a few.

Imagine a world where we can put on a pair of glasses that allow us to overlay digital information onto our physical surroundings, interacting with both realms seamlessly.

Digital twins of industrial machinery, as already used in 5G by engineers to strategize and test upgrades, will now become possible in 6G at a much larger scale. We will realize digital twins of more complex industrial systems in harbors, airports and cities.

Imagine how different collaborative entities in these environments can plan and optimize their processes and services thanks to a perfect understanding of the state of the physical environment. And the long promise of self-driving cars will finally be possible with data speeds and latency levels that permit instantaneous decision making in autonomous vehicles.

The implications for healthcare and defense are particularly profound. For example, remote imaging technologies will make magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound scans more accessible and cost-effective. Three-dimensional medical images will be transmitted to wireless headsets of medical doctors or wireless medical equipment in the hospital at speeds currently only possible via optical cables, revolutionizing patient care and medical research.

Government and defense platforms will benefit from 6G’s increased versatility and customization, unlocking a broader set of capabilities like hiding of tactical networks “in plain sight,” joint communication and sensing, network resilience and enhanced security protocols.

Smartphones, sensors and emerging devices will play a far bigger role in the environment in which we live. They will monitor air quality levels, detect allergens in our food and even possess night vision capabilities. Real-time health monitoring with wearables, which is already here in some forms, will become far more sophisticated. 

All of this will give us better real-time information for workers and general consumers, to further improve widespread health and safety. These capabilities will become accessible and easy to consume at scale thanks to the new 6G infrastructure.

But this new world is not without its challenges. As our lives become increasingly intertwined with digital systems, concerns about privacy and security become even more pronounced. The same network that could safeguard us from medical emergencies might also be exploited for surveillance or cyber-attacks.

It is for this reason that crypto-agility and privacy-preserving mechanisms will be designed into future 6G systems, in order to adapt to many emerging security threats and privacy concerns. Among them, post-quantum cryptography will be essential to protect the network from hackers that will have tomorrow’s potential quantum computers at their disposal.

As we push the boundaries of what’s possible, we must also innovate in energy efficiency and sustainable power infrastructure.

Today’s networks are continuously consuming energy regardless of available network traffic. While the footprint of networks now spans across the country, lesser-traveled areas require power around the clock despite the fact they are only active in rare instances. The collective energy consumption of these energy hogs is substantial.

However, an AI-native 6G will change how we design, operate and optimize networks to minimize power consumption. 

There is no silver bullet to address this challenge and a multi-facetted approach is required. It involves new chip architectures with novel compute-in-memory approaches, sophisticated sleep-modes and rapid wake-up cycles with the finest granularity that will enable smart AI-driven algorithms to achieve the best performance with minimal energy. 

Novel waveforms will enable the most efficient working point for power amplifiers, which are the biggest consumers in radio systems. At the system level, networks will be able to dynamically switch themselves on when needed — otherwise remaining dormant and consuming zero energy when not in use.

The network itself will learn the fastest, most reliable and efficient ways to communicate between two endpoints. This will play a key role in reducing the energy demands of AI, while improving data speeds and reliability even further.

The realization of this 6G future will require collaboration across industries. The collaboration should not only include the traditional service providers, but also system, device and component manufacturers. It is essential to engage the so-called verticals, including the energy, healthcare, transportation and public safety sectors, to understand their requirements, educate them about 6G opportunities and help them bring this 6G vision to life.

As we stand at this technological crossroads, it’s clear that the changes ahead will be as complex as they are exciting. The potential benefits — from revolutionizing healthcare to enhancing human connection — are immense. But so too are the challenges we must navigate.

The future that 6G promises is not a foregone conclusion. It is up to us — policymakers, industry leaders and citizens alike — to shape this technology in ways that enhance human flourishing while safeguarding our values and freedoms.

The dawn of 6G is nearly upon us. How we choose to greet it may define the next chapter of humanity.