The Move Towards 6G Technology
2022/04/29
Image by Athitat Shinagowin on Shutterstock
6G Technology: How Different Will It Be from 5G?
Technology is evolving rapidly and constantly. While the world is still implementing 5G technology in its daily applications and processes, early discussions of 6G have got the tech world abuzz with the potential updates that 5G’s successor can bring to the table.
Research and development on 6G started in 2020, just a year after the launch of 5G. However, realistically, 6G is only expected to be introduced commercially in 2030. As the future of technology shifts towards a world with augmented and virtual reality as the probable norm, the technology that supports it must ensure seamlessness on all fronts, from integration to latency, speed, and other components.
6G is expected to be significantly faster than its predecessor by almost 10–20 times. While 5G is running at a top speed of approximately 10 gigabits per second (Gbps), 6G is expected to hit 100–200 Gbps. Earlier this year, China announced that it had managed to achieve the world’s fastest real-time transmission for terahertz (THz) wireless communication within the expected 6G range. China also launched the world’s first 6G test satellite into space in 2020 to test the technology from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. The satellite, Tianyan-5, was designed to test high-frequency THz communication payloads.
6G is expected to make significant use of distributed radio access network and the THz spectrum to boost its capacity and spectrum sharing and decrease latency. This would allow for streamlined and seamless wireless connectivity, making 6G highly likely to become globally heterogeneous, especially in developed and developing nations. While its predecessors are currently being used heavily in mobile frameworks, 6G is expected to be used beyond those scopes in areas such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and more.
With the speed of technological evolution, 6G would allow for a seamless convergence of vastly disparate technologies in the near future. While 5G has allowed for some degree of convergence, especially in IoT and big data, 6G is expected to make larger waves in this convergency, thus allowing for complete integration across various systems for daily technological applications in different fields.
The race to 6G is on, and companies such as China’s Huawei Technologies, South Korea’s Samsung, and Finland’s Nokia are some of the big names working on the technology. Research is also ongoing in countries like Japan, Australia, India, and Singapore. It will be interesting to see which country or region dominates, as 6G will be an unprecedented game-changing technology.
*Stay tuned for our upcoming 6G series to find out more about the latest developments in this technology.