Tag Archives: 6G

Let the 6G Hype Begin

In case you haven’t been paying attention, wireless vendors are busy working towards the introduction of 6G starting around 2030. The industry has introduced a new generation of cellular technology every ten years since the first 1G network was introduced in 1981.

I’ve been reading a lot of industry press on the upcoming 6G generation of cellular. I have to admit that some of the claims gave me a good laugh, because the vendors in the industry are touting a lot of potential applications for 6G that seem to be a stretch, just like happened during the lead-up to 5G.

Before describing a few of the promises I’ve been reading for 6G, let me remind you of some of what we were promised with 5G that never really materialized. 5G was touted to be bringing:

  • A superfast network since 5G will enable clusters of 5G small cell sites that will bring the network close to everybody.
  • Super-low latency of 4 milliseconds, even in moving vehicles. It was promised that 5G would be able to compete with fiber for functions like real-time gaming and stock trading.
  • Speeds up to 10 Gbps by the widespread introduction of frequencies between 20 and 60 MHz.
  • A greatly increased capacity for simultaneous connections that would mean 5G subscriptions for cars, smart watches, and the many 5G-enabled smart devices in the home.
  • 5G would enable new technologies like stores having 5G-enabled hologram displays throughout a store. Experts envisioned a 5G network strung along every street and road to enable smart self-driving cars. There was even talk about being able to use 5G to enable medical operations using robots conducted by remote doctors.

The coming introduction of 6G also includes a lot of claimed benefits. 6G will:

  • Enable immersive communication and human-machine interactions. Use cases include immersive eXtended Reality (XR), remote multi-sensory telepresence, holographic communications, haptic sensors and actuators, and multi-sensory interfaces.
  • Lower operator costs will mean affordable and meaningful connectivity for all. This means universal coverage, including sparsely populated areas. 6G will create a seamless interface between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks.
  • Be able to connect to a massive number of devices that will enable smart cities, smart cars, environmental monitoring, and sensors for agriculture. (Sounds like the same claim made for 5G).
  • Will enable connections to smart machines for the remote operation of robots, autonomous factories, and the creation of digital twins for factories, health care, and other complex use cases.
  • Peak data rates between 50 and 100 Gbps.
  • A target air interface latency between 0.1 ms and 1 ms.
  • Terrestrial-based locating technologies to locate objects within 1 to 10 centimeters.
  • AI-related capabilities to support distributed data processing, distributed learning, AI computing, AI model execution, and AI model inference.

Just like with 5G, the real-life implementation of 6G will be determined by the functions that wireless carriers can monetize. 5G is outperforming the hype in some areas, and most urban 5G networks today are considerably faster than the 100 Mbps goal included in the early 5G hype, yet most of the promised 5G functionality never materialized when carriers found that customers prefer free WiFi to paying for more cellular subscriptions. The same is going to be true with 6G. It’s hard to imagine that introducing 6G will automatically trigger widespread use of multi-sensory telepresence or somehow bring cell towers to rural America. But you can’t blame the vendors who want to get carriers excited about 6G and be willing to pay for the upgrades.

Here We Go Again

It looks to me like history is repeating itself. We’re seeing the same hype cycle for 6G that we saw for 5G. The big push for 5G was mounted on several fronts. Telecom vendors preached the wonderful new features that 5G would bring to the market. The big cellular carriers got on board and pushed for 5G as the easiest path to get the FCC to award them new spectrum. To be fair to the carriers, they definitely needed new spectrum because the 3G/4G networks were becoming badly overloaded. The government was brought on board to push for 5G with the story line that the U.S. was losing the 5G war to the Chinese.

5G proponents promised a lot of amazing improvements, which were largely dependent on two claims. First was that 5G would bring gigabit speeds that were ten times faster than 4G through the use of millimeter wave spectrum and new technologies like network slicing. There was a promise that latency would fall to less than 1 millisecond, significantly better than fiber. The hype for 5G was over-the-top. 5G was going to bring us self-driving cars powered by ubiquitous 5G networks along every road. 5G would enable doctors to perform surgery remotely from across the country. 5G was going to fuel an explosion of smart factories that would bring complex manufacturing back to the U.S. 5G speeds were going to eliminate the need for investing in expensive fiber networks.

We’re starting to see the same hype cycle starting for 6G. The carriers have been making a huge pitch over the last year to get more spectrum, and have already won the first half of that battle when the H.R. 1 legislation instructed the FCC to find 800 MHz of new mid-range spectrum for the carriers. The lead-up to that bill included policy lobbying claiming that the U.S. is losing the battle for 6G to the Chinese (sound familiar?).

Vendors are also leading the charge again. It’s not hard to understand their motivation since they will benefit tremendously from a new round of major upgrades to cell site electronics. When vendors make claims of future technologies, it’s as much to lobby the carriers as it is any policymakers. Today’s blog talks about the claims of upcoming technologies being made by Hemanth Sampath, Vice President of Engineering at Qualcomm in an interview with FierceNetwork.  In the interview, Sampath was asked about the user experience he expects to become mainstream in the next 5-10 years. His response not only requires a nationwide upgrade to 6G but also would mean a ubiquitous, constant connection between devices and AI data centers.

Sampath envisions a migration during the coming decade away from today’s technology that is app-based, and smartphone-centric or screen-centric. He believes we’ll quickly migrate to what he calls a more natural environment where people will pair smart glasses and a smartwatch to interact with AI agents. He said, “instead of just carrying one device like a phone, you’ll now have multiple devices that you’ll be carrying and you’ll be able to seamlessly work across these different devices by speaking to them, or the glasses see what you see.”

He admits that existing 5G can’t enable that future and that we’ll need an upgrade to 6G, which will have “the extra capacity, the foundational technologies to squeeze more capacity in the existing bands as well as provide new spectrum”. He believes new 6G standards will enable better AI-friendly protocols.

Along with 6G, his vision means that users would be constantly connected to a digital twin in the cloud that will process the inputs from smart glasses and other devices. A constant connection to an AI datacenter will be needed so that computing is done in the cloud to protect the battery life of personal devices.

It’s a bold vision, and one that will require huge capital investments from cellular carriers. The carriers had no choice but to make the upgrades to 5G to prevent a collapse of the 4G network. But in doing so, carriers realized that there was very little new revenue to be derived from increasing cellular bandwidth and capacity. The carriers recognized this quickly and all stopped far short of implementing the full set of 5G features. Carriers are going to be skeptical about making huge investments that depend on millions of people willing to foot the monthly bill that would enable Sampath’s vision. The one wildcard in the vision is that AI companies will support the idea, because just like the cell carriers, they are searching for a recurring revenue to support AI.

Advancing the Speed of Wireless

Scientists at University College London recently achieved a speed on a wireless link of 938 Gbps. That’s over 4,000 times faster than the current average speed being delivered by T-Mobile, the current fastest cellular provider in the U.S.

The team is researching techniques for multiplexing multiple radio transmissions into a coherent transmission. The scientists achieved the speeds by utilizing a huge span of spectrum between 5GHz and 150 GHz. They also had to combine multiple techniques to create and join the signals.

  • The signals from 5-75 GHz were generated using traditional, but high-quality radios that used digital-to-analog converters.
  • The signals from the higher frequencies, the W-band from 75-110 GHz and the D-band from 110-150 GHz were generated by mixing optically modulated signals that used frequency-locked lasers and high-speed photodiodes. By frequency-locking the lasers, the scientists were able to create a stable carrier frequency that avoided the signal noise that would have been generated by normal free-running lasers.
  • The team then used orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM)and bit loading to goose the signal up to 938 Gbps over the air.

Another team of researchers recently achieved fast wireless speeds on a single channel. The team is a consortium of researchers from the Japanese firms DOCOMO, NIT Corporation, NEC Corporation, and Fujitsu. The team of companies created a wireless device that uses 100 GHz spectrum indoors or 300 GHz spectrum outdoors to create a 100 Gbps link that can transmit for about 100 meters. The companies see this first device as the prototype for developing future wireless radios that can deliver speeds only possible today on fiber.

In the past, several research teams in laboratories have created terabit speeds for a link of several feet. There is a lot of literature speculating that radios in space could reliably achieve terabit speeds between satellites without the interference created by air.

All of the research teams are pushing the cutting edge for wireless technologies with the goal of someday creating much faster wireless technology. The worldwide push to master the use of the terahertz frequencies between 100 GHz and 1 THz has been labeled as 6G, although wireless vendors have already absconded that label to describe radios that use millimeter wave spectrum. The terahertz frequencies lie between traditional radio and infrared light.

The first 6G summit met in 2022 in Levi, Lapland, Finland, sponsored by the University of Oulu, and included major wireless vendors like Nokia, Huawei, Ericsson, Samsung, and NTT, along with researchers from numerous universities as well as groups like Bell Labs. At the summit, researchers talked about creating a set of standards for terahertz frequencies by 2030. They identified the first hurdle as the development of chips that can handle faster speeds. There were also questions about whether governments would try to regulate the higher frequencies.

For now, these fast tests represent scientists pushing the edge of radio technology. These tests are not going to produce any usable technology for many years. The University of College London used a wide swath of spectrum that would never by allowed by any government. But the early success of these various tests show that faster radios will somebody be possible.

FCC Touts 6G

The FCC has seemingly joined forces with the marketing arm of the cellular industry in declaring that the spectrum between 7–16 GHz is now considered to be 6G. Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel recently announced that the agency would soon begin looking at the uses for this spectrum for mobile broadband. Specifically, the agency will be looking at 550 MHz of spectrum between 12.7-13.25 GHz for what Rosenworcel characterized as airwaves for the 6G era.

This 7-16 GHz spectrum is already used for a wide range of purposes, including fixed point-to-point microwave links, radio astronomy, communications with airplanes, and various military uses. Probably the biggest current use of the spectrum is for communicating with satellites. Rosenworcel said the agency would consider ways to share some of the spectrum between satellite and terrestrial uses.

The use of the 6G description for this spectrum is a big departure from the recent past. It was just in 2019 when Verizon defined 5G to include the millimeter-wave spectrum as high as 28-39 GHz as part of 5G. I’m sure most of you remember the never-ending TV commercials showing cellphones receiving 1-gigabit speeds. Verizon and a few other cellular carriers had deployed millimeter-wave spectrum in downtown areas of a few major cities as a gimmick to show how fast 5G could be. Verizon labeled this as Ultra Wideband to distinguish it from the 4G LTE spectrum that Verizon and others were starting to label as 5G.

It has to be confusing to be a cellular customer because I try to follow this stuff, and I can’t keep up with the cellular marketers. When Verizon used millimeter-wave spectrum and labeled it as Ultra Wideband, the company flashed a 5G UW icon to users to denote having access to the superfast speeds. But I’m hearing that people are now getting the 5G UW icon when connecting to Verizon’s C-Band spectrum, which is mid-range spectrum between 3.7-4.2 MHz.

The funny thing about everything that cellular marketers are doing is that 5G has nothing to do with any specific frequency range. 5G is a set of specifications to define how cell towers work, and the specification can be used with any spectrum. The 5G spectrum can work in the mid-range spectrum, in the band that the FCC just labeled as 6G, and in the higher millimeter wave spectrum.

I’m mystified that the FCC would suddenly label the spectrum between 7-16 GHz as 6G. There will be no 6G specification – anything we do in this spectrum will still either use the 4G LTE or 5G specifications.  Wireless scientists around the world have started experimenting with what they are calling 6G using terabit spectrum that ranges between 100 GHz and 1 THz. These high frequencies sit right below light and have the capability of being harnessed to transmit huge amounts of data for short distances, such inside superfast computer chips. Scientists expect within the next decade to develop the new 6G specifications.

Scientists understood that the 5G specifications would cover all spectrum up to 100 GHz. But apparently, we’re going to now carve up spectrum into tiny slices and label each tiny slice as a new generation of G. I’ve always joked that we’re going to be to 10G before we know it – and it turns out that was no joke at all and extremely conservative.

Behind all of the confusion behind mislabeling things as 5G and 6G is the fact that we will eventually need new cellular spectrum. Cellular networks seem robust today, but the demand for mobile data keeps growing. There are already a lot of complaints that the new spectrum labeled as 5G is overcrowded. The FCC knows it takes many years after declaring a new cellular spectrum until it shows up in the market. This is the time to look at new spectrum bands to put into use a decade from now. This is not going to be easy because satellite companies will be screaming loudly that cellular companies are trying to steal their spectrum. They aren’t completely wrong about this, and I don’t envy the FCC the job of refereeing between the competing uses of spectrum. Just recently, the FCC made it easier for satellite providers to share in existing spectrum bands. But when the FCC labeled this spectrum as 6G, I think we already know it ultimately favors the cellular companies.

A New Definition of 6G

We now know how the wireless carriers are going to continue the string of new G generations of cellular technology.

5G was originally defined to include spectrum up to 90 GHz or 100 GHz. In the last few years, international standards bodies have been developing new 6G standards in what is called the terahertz wavelengths between 100 GHz and 1 THz. By definition, these higher frequency bands are the remaining part of the radio spectrum, and the so the 6G being defined by international scientists will be the final generation of G technology.

These super-high frequencies have a lot of interesting potential for indoor uses since this spectrum can transmit an immense quantity of data over short distances. But the high frequencies might never be used for outdoor broadband because the extremely short radio waves are easily distorted and scattered by everything in the environment, including air molecules.

Scientists have speculated that transmissions in the terahertz frequencies can carry 1,000 times more data than the current 5G spectrum bands. That’s enough bandwidth to create the 3D holograms needed for convincing virtual presence (and maybe my home holodeck).

But terahertz frequencies are going to be of little use to the cellular carriers. While cellular companies have still not deployed a lot of the 5G standards, the marketing folks at these companies are faced with a future where there would be no more G generations of cellphones – and that is clearly a lost marketing opportunity.

Several of the wireless equipment vendors have started to refer to bandwidths in the centimetric range as 6G. These are frequencies between 7GHz and 20 GHz. I have to admit that I got a really good belly laugh when I read this, because much of this frequencies is already in use – so I guess 6G is already here!

When 5G was first announced, the big news at the time was that 5G would open up the millimeter-wave spectrum between 24 GHz and 40 GHz. The equipment vendors and the cellular carriers spent an immense amount on lobbying and advertising, talking up the wonders of millimeter-wave spectrum. Remember the carefully staged cellular commercials that showed gigabit speeds on cell phones? That was done using millimeter-wave spectrum.

But now, the marketing folks have pulled a big switcheroo. They are going to rename currently used spectrum as 6G. I guess that means millimeter-wave spectrum will become 7G. This also leaves room for several more generations of G marketing before reaching the 100 GHz terahertz spectrum.

This will clearly cause a mountain of confusion. The international folks are not going to rename what they have already labeled as 6G to mollify the cellular marketers. We’re going to have articles, advertising, and lobbying talking about two completely different versions of 6G. And before the ink is dry, we’ll also be talking about 7G.

The cellular vendors also want us to change the way we talk about spectrum. The folks at Nokia are already suggesting that the newly dubbed 6G spectrum bands should be referred to as midband spectrum – a phrase today that refers to lower spectrum bands. That sets the stage to talking about upper bands of frequency as 7G, 8G, and 9G.

What is funniest about this whole process is that there still isn’t even any 5G being used in the world. The cellular carriers have implemented only a small portion of the 5G specification. But that hasn’t deterred the marketers who have convinced everybody that the new bands of spectrum being used for 4G are actually 5G. It’s a pretty slick marketing trick that lets stops the cellular carriers from not having to explain why the actual 5G isn’t here yet.

7G – Really?

I thought I’d check in on the progress that laboratories have made in considering 6G networks. The discussion on what will replace 5G kicked off with a worldwide meeting hosted in 2019 at the University of Oulu, in Levi, Lapland, Finland.

6G technology will explore the frequencies between 100 GHz and 1 THz. This is the frequency range that lies between radio waves and infrared light. These spectrums could support unimaginable wireless data transmission rates of up to one terabyte per second – with the tradeoff that such transmissions will only be effective for extremely short distances.

Scientists have already said 5G will be inadequate for some computing and communication needs. There is definitely a case to be made for applications that need huge amounts of data in real-time. For example, a 5G wireless signal at a few gigabits per second is not able to transmit enough data to support complex real-time manufacturing processes. There is not enough data being transmitted with a 5G network to support things like realistic 3D holograms and the future metaverse.

Scientists at the University of Oulu say they are hoping to have a lab demonstration of the ability to harness the higher spectrum bands by 2026, and they expect the world will start gelling on 6G standards around 2028. That all sounds reasonable and is in line with what they announced in 2019. One of the scientists at the University was quoted earlier this year saying that he hoped that 6G wouldn’t get overhyped as happened with both 4G and 5G.

I think it’s too late for that. You don’t need to do anything more than search for 6G on Google to find a different story – you’ll have to wade through a bunch of articles declaring we’ll have commercial 6G by 2030 before you even find any real information from those engaged in 6G research. There is even an online 6G magazine with news about everything 6G. These folks are already hyping that there will be a worldwide scramble as governments fight to be the first ones to master and integrate 6G – an upcoming 6G race.

I just shake my head when I see this – but it is nothing new. It seems every new technology these days spawns an industry of supposed gurus and prognosticators who try to monetize the potential for each new technology. The first technology I recall seeing this happen with was municipal WiFi in the 1990s. There were expensive seminars and even a paper monthly magazine touting the technology – which, by the way, barely worked and quickly fizzled. Since then, we’ve seen the guru industry pop up for every new technology like 5G, block-chain, AI, bitcoin, and now the metaverse and 6G. Most new cutting-edge technologies find their way into the economy but at a much slower pace than touted by the so-called early experts.

But before the imaginary introduction of 6G s by 2030, we will need to first integrate 5G into the world. Half of the cellphones in the world still connect using 3G. While 3G is being phased out in the U.S., it’s going to be a slower process elsewhere. While there are hundreds of Google links to articles that predict huge numbers of 5G customers this year – there aren’t any. At best, we’re currently at 4.1G or 4.2G – but the engineering reality is obviously never going to deter the marketers. We’ll probably see a fully compliant 5G cell site before the end of this decade, and it will be drastically different, and better, than what we’re calling 5G today. It’ll take another few years after that for real 5G technology to spread across U.S. urban areas. There will be a major discussion among cellular carriers about whether the 5G capabilities will make any sense in rural areas since the 5G technology is mostly aimed at solving overcrowded urban cellular networks.

Nobody is going to see a 6G cellphone in their lifetime, except perhaps as a gimmick. We’re going to need several generations of better batteries before any handheld device can process terabyte data without zapping the battery within minutes. That may not deter Verizon from showing a cellular speed test at 100 Gbps – but marketers will be marketers.

Believe it or not, there are already discussions about 7G – although nobody can define it. It seems that it will have something to do with AI and the Internet of Things. It’s a little fuzzy about how something after 6G will even be related to the evolution of cellular technology – but this won’t stop the gurus from making money off the gullible.

When Will We See Real 5G?

The non-stop wireless industry claims that we’ve moved from 4G to 5G finally slowed to the point that I stopped paying attention to it during the last year. There is an interesting article in PC Magazine that explains why 5G has dropped off the front burner.

The article cites interviews with Art Pouttu of Finland’s University of Oulu about the current state and the future of 5G. That university has been at the forefront of the development of 5G technology and is already looking at 6G technology.

Pouttu reminds us that there is a new ‘G” generation of wireless technology about every ten years but that it takes twenty years for the market to fully embrace all of the benefits of a new generation of wireless technology.

We are just now entering the heyday of 4G. The term 4G has been bantered around by wireless marketing folks for so long that it’s hard to believe that we didn’t see a fully-functional 4G cell site until late in 2018. Since then, the cellular companies have beefed up 4G in two ways. First, the technology is now spread through cell sites everywhere. But more importantly, 4G systems have been bolstered by the addition of new bands of cellular spectrum. The marketing folks have gleefully been labeling this new spectrum as 5G, but the new spectrum is doing nothing more than supporting the 4G network.

I venture to guess that almost nobody thinks their life has been drastically improved because 4G cellphone speeds have climbed in cities over the last few years from 30 Mbps to over 100 Mbps. I can see that faster speed on my cellphone if I take a speed test, but I haven’t really noticed much difference between the performance of my phone today compared to four years ago.

There are two major benefits from the beefed-up 4G. The first benefits everybody but has gone unnoticed. The traditional spectrum bands used for 4G were getting badly overloaded, particularly in metropolitan areas. The new bands of spectrum have relieved the pressure on cell sites and are supporting the continued growth in cellular data use. Without the new spectrum, our 4G experience would be deteriorating.

The new spectrum has also enabled the cellular carriers to all launch rural fixed cellular broadband products. Before the new spectrum, there was not enough bandwidth on rural cell sites to support both cellphones and fixed cellular customers. The many rural homes that can finally buy cellular broadband that is faster than rural DSL are the biggest winners.

But those improvements have nothing to do with 5G. The article points out what has always been the case. The promise of 5G has never been about better cellphone performance. It’s always been about applications like using wireless spectrum in complex settings like factories where feedback from huge numbers of sensors needs to be coordinated in real-time.

The cellular industry marketing machine did a real number on all of us – but perhaps most of all on the politicians. We’ve had the White House, Congress, and State politicians all talking about how the U.S. needed to win the 5G war with China – and there is still some of that talk going around today. This hype was pure rubbish. What the cellular carriers needed was more spectrum from the FCC to stave off the collapse of the cellular networks. But no cellular company wanted to crawl to Congress begging for more spectrum, because doing so would have meant the collapse of cellular company stock prices. Instead, we were fed a steady diet of false rhetoric about how 5G was going to transform the world.

The message from the University of Oulu is that most 5G features are probably still five or six years away. But even when they finally get here, 5G is not going to bring much benefit or change to our daily cellphone usage. It was never intended to do that. We already have 100 Mbps cellular data speeds with no idea how to use the extra speed on our cellphones.

Perhaps all we’ve learned from this experience is that the big cellular companies have a huge amount of political and social clout and were able to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes. They told us that the sky was falling and could only be fixed with 5G. I guess we’ll find out in a few years if we learned any lesson from this because we can’t be far off from hearing the hype about 6G. This time it will be 100% hype because 6G deals with the use of extremely short frequencies that will never be used in outdoor cellular networks. But I have a feeling that we’ll find ourselves in a 6G war with China before we know it.

The Evolution of 5G

Technology always evolves and I’ve been reading about where scientists envision the evolution of 5G. The first generation of 5G, which will be rolled out over the next 3-5 years, is mostly aimed at increasing the throughput of cellular networks. According to Cisco, North American cellular data volumes are growing at a torrid 36% per year, and even faster than that in some urban markets where the volumes of data are doubling every two years. The main goal of first-generation 5G is to increase network capacity to handle that growth.

However, if 5G is deployed only for that purpose we won’t see the giant increases in speed that the public thinks is coming with 5G. Cisco is predicting that the average North American cellular speed in 2026 will be around 70 Mbps – a far cry from the gigabit speed predictions you can find splattered all over the press.

There is already academic and lab work looking into what is being labeled as 6G. That will use terabit spectrum and promises to potentially be able to deliver wireless speeds up to as much as 1 terabit per second. I’ve already seen a few articles touting this as a giant breakthrough, but the articles didn’t mention that the effective distance for this spectrum can be measured in a few feet – this will be an indoor technology and will not be the next cellular replacement for 5G.

This means that to some degree, 5G is the end of the line in terms of cellular delivery. This is likely why the cellular carriers are gobbling up as much spectrum as they can. That spectrum isn’t all needed today but will be needed by the end of the decade. The cellular carriers will use every spectrum block now to preserve the licenses, but the heavy lifting for most of the spectrum being purchased today will come into play a decade or more from now – the carriers are playing the long game so that they aren’t irrelevant in the not-too-distant future

This doesn’t mean that 5G is a dead-end, and the technology will continue to evolve. Here are a few of the ideas being explored in labs today that will enhance 5G performance a decade from now:

  • Large Massive Network MIMO. This means expanding the density and capacity of cellular antennas to simultaneously be able to handle multiple spectrum bands. We need much better antennas if we are to get vastly greater data volumes into and out of cellular devices. For now, data speeds on cellphones are being limited by the capacity of the antennas.
  • Ultra Dense Networks (UDN). This envisions the end of cell sites in the way we think about them today. This would come first in urban networks where there will be a hyper-dense deployment of small cell devices that would likely also incorporate small cells, WiFi routers, femtocells, and M2M gateways. In such an environment, cellphones can interact with the cloud rather than with a traditional cell site. This eliminates the traditional cellular standard of one cell site controlling a transaction. In a UDN network, a cellular device could connect anywhere.
  • Device-to-Device (D2D) Connectivity. The smart 5G network in the future will let nearby devices communicate with each other without having to pass traffic back and forth to a data hub. This would move some cellular transactions to the edge, and would significantly reduce logjams at data centers and on middle-mile fiber routes.
  • A Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Layer. A huge portion of future web traffic will be communications between devices and the cloud. This research envisions a separate cellular network for such traffic that maximizes M2M communications separately from traffic used by people.
  • Use of AI. Smart networks will be able to shift and react to changing demands and will be able to shuffle and share network resources as needed. For example, if there is a street fair in a neighborhood that is usually vehicle traffic, the network would smartly reconfigure to recognize the changing demand for connectivity.
  • Better Batteries. None of the improvements come along until there are better ‘lifetime’ batteries that can allow devices to use more antennas and process more data.

Wireless marketing folks will be challenged to find ways to describe these future improvements in the 5G network. If the term 6G becomes associated with terabit spectrum, marketers are going to find something other than a ‘G’ term to over-hype the new technologies.

Terahertz WiFi

While labs across the world are busy figuring out how to implement the 5G standards there are scientists already working in the higher frequency spectrum looking to achieve even faster speeds. The frequencies that are just now being explored are labeled as the terahertz range and are at 300 GHz and higher spectrum. This spectrum is the upper ranges of radio spectrum and lies just below ultraviolet light.

Research in these frequencies started around 2010, and since then the achieved broadband transmission speeds have progressed steadily. The first big announced breakthrough in the spectrum came in 2016 when scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology achieved speeds of 34 Gbps using the WiFi standard and the 500 GHz spectrum range.

In 2017, researchers at Brown University School of Engineering were able to achieve 50 Gbps. Later that year a team of scientists from Hiroshima University, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology and Panasonic Corporation achieved a speed of 105 Gbps. This team has also subsequently developed a transceiver chip that can send and receive data at 80 Gbps – meaning these faster speeds could be moved out of the lab and into production.

Like with all frequencies, when transmitted through the air, the higher the bandwidth the shorter the distance until a radio transmission scatters. That makes the biggest challenge for using these frequencies the short transmission distances. However, several of the research teams have shown that transmissions perform well when bounced off walls and the hope is to eventually achieve distances as long as 10 meters (30 feet).

The real benefit of superfast bandwidth will likely be for super-short distances. One of the uses of these frequencies could be to beam data into computer processors. One of the biggest impediments to faster computing is the physical act of getting data to where it’s needed on time, and terahertz lasers could be used to speed up chips.

Another promising use of the faster lasers is to create faster transmission paths on fibers. Scientists have already been experimenting and it looks like these frequencies can be channeled through extremely thin fibers to achieve speeds much faster than anything available today. Putting this application into the field is probably a decade or more away – but it’s a breakthrough that’s needed. Network engineers have already been predicting that we will exhaust the capabilities of current fiber technology on the major Internet transmission paths between major POPs. As the volume of bandwidth we use keeps doubling we will be transmitting more data in a decade or two between places like New York and Washington DC than all of the existing fibers can theoretically carry. When fiber routes get that full the problem can’t be easily fixed by adding more fibers – not when the volumes double every few years. We need solutions that involve fitting more data into existing fibers.

There are other applications that could use higher frequencies today. For example, there are bandwidth needs for specific applications like real-time medical imaging and real-time processing for intricate chemical engineering that need faster bandwidth that is possible with 5G. The automated factories that will create genetic-based drug solutions will need much faster bandwidth. There are other more mundane uses of the higher frequencies. For example, these frequencies could be used to replace X-rays and reduce radiation risks in doctor’s offices and airports.

No matter what else the higher frequencies can achieve, I’m holding out for Star Trek holodecks. The faster terahertz frequencies could support creation of the complex real-time images involved in truly immersive entertainment.

These frequencies will become the workhorse for 6G, the next generation of wireless technology. The early stages of developing a 6g standard is underway with expectations of having a standard by perhaps 2030. Of course, the hype for 6G has also already begun. I’ve already seen several tech articles that talk about the potential for having ultrafast cellular service using these frequencies. The authors of these articles don’t seem to grasp that we’d need a cell site every twenty feet – but facts don’t seem to get in the way of good wireless hype.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

There is a lot of talk around the world among academics and futurists that we have now entered into the beginnings of the fourth industrial revolution. The term industrial revolution is defined as a rapid change in the economy due to technology.

The first industrial revolution came from steam power that drove the creation of the first large factories to create textiles and other goods. The second industrial revolution is called the age of science and mass production and was powered by the simultaneous development of electricity and oil-powered combustion engines. The third industrial revolution was fairly recent and was the rise of digital technology and computers.

There are differing ideas of what the fourth industrial revolution means, but every prediction involves using big data and emerging technologies to transform manufacturing and the workplace. The fourth industrial revolution means mastering and integrating an array of new technologies including artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, IoT, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and quantum computing. Some technologists are already predicting that the shorthand description for this will be the age of robotics.

Each of these new technologies is in their infancy but all are progressing rapidly. Take the most esoteric technology on the list – quantum computing. As recently as three or four years ago this was mostly an academic concept and we now have first generation quantum computers. I can’t recall where I read it, but I remember a quote that said that if we think of the fourth industrial revolution in terms of a 1,000-day process that we are now only on day three.

The real power of the fourth industrial revolution will come from integrating the technologies. The technology that is the most advanced today is robotics, but robotics will change drastically when robots can process huge amounts of data quickly and can use AI and machine learning to learn and cope with the environment in real time. Robotics will be further enhanced in a factory or farm setting by integrating a wide array of sensors to provide feedback from the surrounding environment.

I’m writing about this because all of these technologies will require the real-time transfer of huge amounts of data. Futurists and academics who talk about the fourth industrial revolution seem to assume that the needed telecon technologies already exist – but they don’t exist today and need to be developed in conjunction with the other new technologies.

The first missing element to enable the other technologies are computer chips that can process huge amounts of data in real time. Current chip technology has a built-in choke point where data is queued and fed into and out of a chip for processing. Scientists are exploring a number of ways to move data faster. For example, light-based computing has the promise to move data at speeds up to 50 Gbps. But even that’s not fast enough and there is research being done using lasers to beam data directly into the chip processor – a process that might increase processing speeds 1,000 times over current chips.

The next missing communications element is a broadband technology that can move data fast enough to keep up with the faster chips. While fiber can be blazingly fast, a fiber is far too large to use at the chip level, and so data has to be converted at some point from fiber to some other transmission path.

The amount of data that will have to be passed in some future applications is immense. I’ve already seen academics bemoaning that millimeter wave radios are not fast enough, so 5G will not provide the solution. Earlier this year the first worldwide meeting was held to officially start collaborating on 6G technology using terabit wave spectrum. Transmissions at those super-high frequencies only stay coherent for a few feet, but these frequencies can carry huge amounts of data. It’s likely that 6G will play a big role in providing the bandwidth to the robots and other big data needs of the fourth industrial revolution. From the standpoint of the telecom industry, we’re no longer talking about last-mile and we are starting to address the last-foot!