The vivo Communications Research Institute released its third 6G white paper, “Building a Freely Connected Physical and Digital Integrated World: 6G Services, Capabilities and Enabling Technologies”. The report explores the 6G framework and enabling technologies that vivo experts believe will shape people’s lives beyond 2030.
“As one of the world’s leading smartphone vendors, we are dedicated to empowering consumers by making cutting-edge 5G smartphones affordable and accessible. At the same time, we have set our sights on the future – 6G. At the forefront of R&D, we continue to explore what a 6G world might look like and what technologies we need to develop to get there.”
Qin Fei, vivo Communications Research Institute President
The vivo Communications Research Institute has been actively contributing to shaping the future of 6G with in-depth analysis and evaluation of 6G business models and drivers, application scenarios, system architecture, and enabling technologies.
Its latest white paper on 6G builds on two earlier works released in 2020 including ‘Digital Life 2030+’ and ‘6G Vision, Requirements, and Challenges’. The former provides insights into some of the potential 6G digital scenarios for the next decade. Meanwhile, the latter outlines the company’s vision for 6G which will enable the convergence of digital and physical worlds.
Services and Capabilities
The white paper proposes that 6G will provide super communication, information, and converged computing services. This will become a base for an interconnected world both physically and digitally.
According to the analysis, 6G will converge communication, computation, and sensing in a single system. An integrated 5G network will connect humans to humans as well as humans to machines and machines to machines. It can be expected that hundreds of billions of devices will be connected by 2030.
“6G will allow us to bring the next generation of connectivity into every aspect of people’s lives. It will integrate more access technologies, cover a larger physical space, and provide better core capabilities, supporting more services. By seamlessly connecting industries, transportation, workspace, and homes, 6G will contribute greatly to society – from the democratization of professional talent to the enhancement of emergency and disaster response.”
Rakesh Tamrakar, vivo 5G Standard Expert
6G will expand basic telecom services to support completely new experiences, like mixed reality and holographic and multi-sensory communication. Its data connectivity services will continue to improve in capacity, data rate, latency, reliability, and many other aspects.
Through this, the range of customers and value of services will be broadened and increased with more end-to-end flexibility and adaptability.
This means that every performance indicator like data rate, communication delay, and area capacity will need to be improved several folds or more compared with 5G.
6G service capability definition requires careful consideration of demand, technology and cost, balancing performance metrics and efficiency indicators.
Enabling Technologies
New network functions need to be introduced to support the new 6G services and achieve integration of sensing and communication. 6G will converge mobile network and computing, cross-domain data interaction, and native AI network. This will, therefore, require an all-new system architecture design.
Integrating sensing and communication taps into a new area of opportunity in cellular wireless networks – 6G native AI would improve network and air interface efficiency and reduce cost, to name a few. The introduction of an end-to-end cross-layer data plane is essential to support intelligent and basic information services.
Currently, the Multi-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) evolution, Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) technology, and new waveforms are some of the exciting research areas. These are paving the way toward a more efficient and more flexible network that can support more application scenarios and offer more advanced sensing functions.
The research and development of 6G technology standards is still in the early stage. The vivo Communications Research Institute is dedicated to continuing to refine 6G scenario use cases and technical indicators and carry out in-depth research and experimental verification of potential 6G technologies. Additionally, it will continue to contribute to the development of a globally unified 6G standard.
If you’re interested to download and reading the “Building a Freely Connected Physical and Digital Integrated World: 6G Services, Capabilities and Enabling Technologies ” white paper, click here.
Ram found his love and appreciation for writing in 2015 having started in the gaming and esports sphere for GG Network. He would then transition to focus more on the world of tech which has also began his journey into learning more about this world. That said though, he still has the mentality of "as long as it works" for his personal gadgets.
