At the Global 6G Technology Conference held on March 23, Wu Hequan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, analyzed the needs and challenges of 6G technology from the perspective of terminal development.
“From 5G to 5G-Advanced, 6G, we can see some of the indicators of improvement, including bandwidth, peak rate, frequency efficiency, energy efficiency, application efficiency, reliability, etc. 6G is more than simply pursuing a decade generation how many times the peak rate, more is the desire to provide efficiency, hope to achieve full coverage of the application scenario, and provide more intelligence.” Wu Hequan said, “So we have to look at what capabilities the 6G network should have from the perspective of terminal development.”
Wu Hequan said that, at present, the form of 6G terminals is likely to be still dominated by smartphones and IoT modules, and the demand for XR, 3D and holographic communication related to the metaverse is not enough to become the core application that drives 6G development at present because it is limited by the head-up display technology.
Wu Hequan said: “Smartphones are still the main application of 6G, calling is the most basic, which is no different from 5G, or even 3G, 4G. What needs to be added is probably the ability to access the satellite Internet, as well as the ability to talk at high movement speeds. 6G’s high bandwidth will make data transmission faster. But unless it’s very large data, users won’t see the difference from 5G or even 4G.”
“6G will be largely used in the industrial sector, where industrial modules need more power, wider channels, more connections, low latency, high precision positioning, high reliability, and direct end-to-end connectivity compared to phones, and the desire to integrate enterprise PLC data acquisition/control functions, edge computing functions, and also open programming. ” Wu Hequan said, “industrial applications to the harsh ambient temperature, to resist electromagnetic interference, seismic, this safety, explosion-proof requirements are strict, but also to be able to work long life and maintenance-free, but because the application of personalized, each factory requirements are different, will lead to industrial modules cost too high, it is difficult to promote.”
In addition to industrial modules, vehicle-mounted terminals can also be seen as industrial modules. Wu Hequan said that the vehicle terminal has its own characteristics, the car and the car can go through, but from the perspective of the network, the car and the car is non-cooperative, in the car network to pay more attention to low latency, high security and high precision positioning, which is also a challenge for 6G. 6G also has a major application is the Internet of things. Wu Hequan said that the IoT terminal does not require high bandwidth, it requires low power consumption, low latency, low cost, large connection, high density, high reliability, precise positioning, long life, so another dimension of 6G terminal is how to do more lightweight, cheaper, simpler, not required to do more complex.
6G uses to terahertz (THz) band transmission capability, which is 1000 times higher than 5G, and network latency is reduced from milliseconds to microseconds.
