As I am active on multiple social networks including blogs, twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc., Its always tricky to be able to share information from one on to another. Some time back I tweeted about the 6G research that seems to have started according to an article in FT.
While everyone is focusing on 5G, research has already started on 6G :-) http://t.co/FvxJvXaxXS via @FT pic.twitter.com/g50hYqsnrN
— Zahid Ghadialy (@zahidtg) May 3, 2015
While I had a few retweets and interactions, I realised that its always challenging to search the tweets so I decided to add this in the blog post, always easier to look it up. So the FT Article states that:
Even as 5G
remains a distant prospect for most mobile users, some scientists have already
begun to work on plans for 6G services in the future.
To an
extent, terms such as 4G and 5G have become as much about marketing equipment
as any single technology breakthrough, with incremental improvements to
technical specifications often arbitrarily given names such as 3.5G or 4.5G.
But that
has not stopped people from thinking about what 6G could look like — and in the
UK at least, the prediction is for a “quantum” leap.
Britain
has created a “national quantum strategy” to identify areas where advances in
technology will have the greatest impact on daily lives in the future. The
strategy was developed by the Quantum Technologies Strategic Advisory Board, a
government funded agency, which oversees the £270m programme.
So why did I suddenly think about 6G? Because I have had a few discussions where the research community feel that they should focus on technologies beyond 5G, something that would be a game changer and would change the way we do communications. To be honest, new ways of communications have been found (like LED-Fi / Li-Fi ) but they have not really been ground breaking.
Do you have any ideas or suggestions, add it as comments.
8 comments:
6G will be the home for all the new technologies which are too late (or rejected) as 5G candidates
It will be too early to predict contents of 6G as 5G is yet to evolve.
What is planned and what will be really seen on the roads is a different story. Actually I liked the IMT approach for 4G saying each system which fulfills the (defined) IMT-advanced requirements can be named 4G.
I love the fact that one number is better than the other. Still it does not look as stupid as 7D cinemas. Yet.
5G has not been defined in great technical detail. A functional definition of 5G is whatever carriers roll out next. So I don't think the question "Have researchers moved on past 5G to 6G?" has a lot of meaning.
I don't know Nathan, maybe Zahid is on to something. If the IETF can take IP directly from IPv4 to IPv6 then why can't wireless technology go straight from 4G to 6G? Let's petition the ITU: "We don't want to wait. Give us 6G now!" Heck, like Nigel Tufnel from Spinal Tap would say, why don't we just crank it it all the way up to 11G?!
But seriously, as Nathan says, 5G has yet to be defined, so it is hard to say that researchers are moving past it. But it is good to see that researchers are looking far into the future. After all, most of the theoretical work behind digital signal processing was done long before it was technologically feasible to implement it.
Nathan, Bill, its just an honest question. Agree that no one knows for sure what 5G will look like including air Interface technologies, spectrum bands, etc. Is there any point in focusing on something and calling it 6G?
The usual industry moronics. If you use the following simple rule :
Tech is (n+1)G means its best DL/UL bit rate is around 10x that of nG
there is no problem.
EDGE = 2.5G. HSPA = 3.5G. LTE = 4G.
So my 6G friends, ping me when your radio link is doing 10Gbps in the DL.
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