What will 6G be like?

There is some debate about what 6G would entail, and whether indeed it’s relevant to consider
the term, as user requirements will change greatly in the next 10–20 years.

A high-level answer is that 6G will explore and include relevant technologies that will be left out
from 5G, due to being “too late”, experimental in status or simply outside the defined scope for
5G. Future applications and technologies will be integrated when they achieve maturity.

For 6G, one proposal is to integrate terrestrial wireless with satellite systems, for ubiquitous
always-on broadband global network coverage.

6G Applications and Technology

Many of the cellular devices connected nowadays are machines (IoT) rather than people, with
the rise of Smart Homes, Smart Building and Smart Cities, so 5G and 6G will include increased
demands for machine-to-machine communications, including robotic and autonomous drone
delivery and transport systems. The Internet-of-Everything (IoE) is a related development.

Other trends predicted for 6G include Ultra-dense cell networks, Reconfigurable Hardware,
Millimetre Waves for user access, enhanced Optical-Wireless interface, Networked VLC,
Intelligent Networking and technologies to enable Full Immersive Experience for users.

One thing we can be confident on is that users will demand and expect greater global coverage,
higher capacities and always-on connectivity for new and future internet services and
applications, and that 6G will be expected to deliver all of these.

Increasing Ease of Infrastructure Upgrade

One factor in the drive towards 6G is the growing trend of Software Defined Radio (SDR) and
Software Defined Networking (SDN): These mean that future 6G technologies will be easier to
upgrade to, with cloud-based resources and software loads enabling upgrade of existing 4G and
future 5G equipment to enable 6G applications.

This reduces the expensive and disruptive “fork lift” upgrades of previous mobile standards
which generally entail replacement of physical infrastructure. Inter-vendor operability is also an
increasing trend, with democratisation fueled through open-source development of
technologies.
CableFree LTE Base Station with Carrier Aggregation (CA) for 4G and beyond
A CableFree 4G/LTE-advanced Base station features Software Defined Radio (SDR) and
Software Defined Networking (SDN). Running current LTE Release 13, these Base Stations
enable Software upgrades to future 5G standards and beyond.