Challenges and Technologies for 6G

TLDR

The rapid deployment of 5G NR networks and ongoing 3GPP releases have spurred industry and academia to focus on 6G, envisioned for 2030, to tackle new challenges beyond 5G’s backward‑compatible evolution. This paper seeks to identify key challenges for 6G and propose technical components to address them. The authors describe these challenges, propose corresponding technical solutions, and outline the main requirements that should guide 6G development.

Abstract

A significant number of 5G commercial networks, both based on New Radio (NR) Non-Standalone and NR Standalone, were launched in 2019 and this number continues to grow even further in 2020. While 3GPP is continuously working on the evolution of 5G NR with Release 16 being finalized early 2020 and the start of Release 17, industry and academia has started looking towards the next generation of mobile networks, 6G, that is targeted for the 2030 timeline and aims at addressing challenges not easily achievable in a backwards-compatible manner with 5G NR evolution. 6G should address a new range of challenges of critical importance for networks, as well as for the constantly changing society, which calls for new architecture and new technical solutions. In this paper, we describe a set of potential challenges and propose possible technical components to address them in a future 6G system. We also outline the main requirements that should guide the 6G development.