Charting the Engineering Route to 6G

Although the world is only two years into the 5G era, the communications industry is already looking at what technologies will come next. The desire to always move ahead is already making the next generation in telecom, 6G, a hot topic.

Given this high level of interest, Telecoms.com Intelligence, in collaboration with IEEE, recently conducted a survey of telecoms professionals to get their views on the engineering challenges posed by 6G. The survey covered topics ranging from cell-free radio networks to replacements for silicon and many in between. Here are a few snippets the industry experts have told us:

• 49% believe 6G will likely provide incremental improvement on all dimensions over 5G
• 39% think radically different network architecture, e.g. cell-free massive MIMO, smart radio environment will be the most fundamental differentiator between 6G and 5G
• 37% see the lack of breakthrough in battery technologies to support high power-consuming devices as the biggest challenge when developing 6G customer devices like smartphones

In the report readers can see the details and analyses behind these headline findings and many more. In addition, we have also included the full detailed survey results in the report as an appendix, for the reader’s easy reference.

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In addition to the report, readers will receive exclusive free access to a popular IEEE article—”The Road to 6G: Ten Physical Layer Challenges for Communications Engineers”. This paper from IEEE Communications Magazine is only one of many important research documents made available through an IEEE Xplore digital library subscription.