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On the road to 6G: Drivers, Challenges and enabling Technologies

News from Dec. 21, 2021

In the Fraunhofer Lighthouse project 6G SENTINEL five Fraunhofer institutes are bundling their know how to develop key radio and core network technologies for 6G. The project has published its first whitepaper containing new perspectives on 6G use cases, a high-level classification of challenges and requirements as well as first steps towards an end-to-end 6G architecture.

6G related activities are assumed to start around 2025, while first 6G deployments can be expected no earlier than for 2030. Frequently discussed use cases for 6G are digital twins, virtual and augmented reality (XR), tele-presence, tele-operation and autonomous driving. To enable these use cases, a significant increase of 10x or more in the traditional KPIs like peak data rate, reliability, latency, connection density, and localization accuracy is required from 5G to 6G as well as a very flexible network architecture able to morph to the momentary specific requirements. To achieve the required improvement, the following key technologies need to be developed:

  • Terahertz radio technologies for ultra-high data rates
  • Flexible networks for situationally-adapted network availability
  • Fully integrated localization utilizing reinforcement learning for greater positioning accuracy
  • A drastically optimized network architecture for best service quality and reliability

The white paper “On the road to 6G: Drivers, Challenges and enabling Technologies” contains the first steps into the direction including:

  • A new highly pragmatic perspective on 6G use case
  • A high-level classification of challenges and requirements
  • A best-practice driven approach for 6G
  • The first steps towards a comprehensive 6G architecture
  • The agile 6G SENTINEL roadmap and the technology milestones
  • The status and achievements of the 6G SENTINEL project

The partners of the Fraunhofer Lighthouse project 6G SENTINEL are Fraunhofer IIS (coordinator), Fraunhofer FOKUS, Fraunhofer HHI, Fraunhofer IZM and Fraunhofer IAF.