After the read, you will know:
- What is 6G definition
- What is 6G technologies
- What is 6G progress
- What is 6G technical indicators
- What is 6G faced technical difficulties
- What is 6G industry perspective
What Is 6G?
6G is the sixth-generation mobile communication standard, also called the sixth-generation mobile communication technology. The main promotion is the development of the IoT.
Currently, 6G is still in the development stage. The transmission capacity of 6G may be 100 times higher than that of 5G, and the network delay may also drop from milliseconds to microseconds.
6G mainly promotes the development of the Internet.
The 6G network will be a fully connected world that integrates terrestrial wireless and satellite communications. By integrating satellite communications into 6G mobile communications to achieve seamless global coverage, network signals can reach any place.
In addition, with the support of the global satellite positioning system, telecommunication satellite system, earth image satellite system, and 6G ground network, the ground-air full-coverage network can also help humans predict the weather and quickly respond to natural disasters. This is the future of 6G.
6G communication technology is no longer a simple breakthrough in network capacity and transmission rate. It is more about narrowing the digital divide and realizing the ultimate goal of the interconnection of everything. This is the meaning of 6G.
The data transmission rate of 6G may reach 50 times that of 5G, and the delay is reduced to one-tenth of 5G. It is far superior in terms of peak rate, delay, traffic density, connection density, mobility, spectrum efficiency, and positioning capability. 5G.
First, What is 6G technology
What is 6G terahertz frequency band?
6G will use the terahertz (THz) frequency band, and the density of 6G networks will reach an unprecedented level. By then, our surroundings will be full of small cells.
The terahertz frequency band refers to 100GHz-10THz, which is a frequency band much higher than 5G. From communication 1G (0.9GHz) to 4G (above 1.8GHZ), the frequency of the wireless electromagnetic waves we use is constantly increasing.
As the number of users and the number of smart devices increase, the limited spectrum bandwidth needs to serve more terminals, which will result in a serious decline in the service quality of each terminal. The feasible way to solve this problem is to develop new communication frequency bands and expand communication bandwidth.
The main 4G frequency bands of my country’s three major operators are located in a part of the frequency band between 1.8GHz-2.7GHz, and the mainstream 5G frequency band defined by the International Telecommunications Standards Organization is 3GHz-6GHz, which belongs to the millimeter-wave frequency band.
When it comes to 6G, it will enter the higher frequency terahertz frequency band, and this time it will also enter the sub-millimeter wave frequency band.
Generally speaking, there are many factors that affect the coverage of a base station, such as the frequency of the signal, the transmission power of the base station, the height of the base station, and the height of the mobile terminal.
As far as the frequency of the signal is concerned, the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength. Therefore, the diffraction ability of the signal (also known as diffraction, when an obstacle is encountered during the propagation of electromagnetic waves when the size of the obstacle is close to the wavelength of the electromagnetic wave, the electromagnetic wave can be Diffracted from the edge of the object.
Diffraction can help to cover the shadow area) the worse, the greater the loss. And this loss will increase as the transmission distance increases, and the range that the base station can cover will decrease accordingly.
The frequency of the 6G signal is already at the terahertz level, and this frequency is close to the spectrum of the molecular rotation energy level, and it is easily absorbed by water molecules in the air, so the distance traveled in space is not as far as the 5G signal, so 6G needs more base station support.
The frequency band used by 5G is higher than that of 4G. Without considering other factors, the coverage of 5G base stations is naturally smaller than that of 4G. To the higher frequency band 6G, the coverage of the base station will be smaller.
Therefore, the density of 5G base stations is much higher than that of 4G, and in the 6G era, the density of base stations will not increase.
Second, What is 6G progress?
According to a news report on September 1, 2020, a major breakthrough in the study of terahertz photonics components will help create cheap and compact quantum cascade lasers to achieve 6G telecommunication connections.
Spatial reuse technology
6G will use spatial multiplexing technology, 6G base stations will be able to access hundreds or even thousands of wireless connections at the same time, and its capacity will reach 1000 times that of 5G base stations.
As mentioned earlier, 6G will use the terahertz frequency band, although this high-frequency band has abundant frequency resources and large system capacity. However, mobile communication systems using high-frequency carriers face severe challenges in improving coverage and reducing interference.
When the frequency of the signal exceeds 10 GHz, the main propagation mode is no longer diffraction. For non-line-of-sight transmission links, reflection and scattering are the main signal propagation methods.
At the same time, the higher the frequency, the greater the propagation loss, the closer the coverage distance, and the weaker the diffraction ability. These factors will greatly increase the difficulty of signal coverage.
Not only 6G but also 5G in the millimeter-wave band. And 5G solves such problems through two key technologies, Massive MIMO, and beamforming. The signal of our mobile phone is connected to the carrier’s base station, and more accurately, it is the antenna on the base station.
Massive MIMO technology is very simple to say, it actually compensates for the loss on the high-frequency path by increasing the number of transmitting antennas and receiving antennas, that is, designing a multi-antenna array.
The number of transmitted data can be increased under the configuration of MIMO multiple antennas, and this uses spatial multiplexing technology. At the transmitting end, the high-rate data stream is divided into multiple lower-rate sub-data streams, and different sub-data streams are transmitted on different transmitting antennas on the same frequency band.
5G uses MIMO technology to improve spectrum utilization. The frequency band of 6G is higher, and the further development of MIMO is likely to provide key technical support for 6G.
Third, What is 6G key technical indicators
Several key indicators to measure 6G technology:
(1) The peak transmission speed reaches 100Gbps-1Tbps, while 5G is only 10Gpbs;
(2) The indoor positioning accuracy reaches 10 cm, and the outdoor is 1 meter, which is 10 times higher than 5G;
(3) The communication delay is 0.1 milliseconds, which is one-tenth of 5G;
(4) The probability of interruption is less than one in a million, with ultra-high reliability;
(5) The density of connected equipment reaches more than one hundred per cubic meter, with ultra-high-density;
(6) Using terahertz (THz) frequency band for communication, the network capacity is greatly increased.
Fourth, What is 6G facing technical difficulties?
(1) The immature terahertz communication technology poses technical challenges for integrated electronics and new materials.
(2) Technical difficulties in data collection to consumption.
Fifth, the industry perspective
The development of 5G and 6G is parallel, but the large-scale use of 6G is still far away. 6G is in the development process, it is estimated that it will take another 10 years, and is currently doing technical research and standard research, and it has not yet reached the commercial stage.
The speed of the 6G network will be 100 times faster than that of 5G, almost reaching 1TB per second. This means that downloading a movie can be completed within 1 second, the control of unmanned driving and drones will be very comfortable, and users will not even feel that To any delay.
Academic circles now have different views on the definition of 6G. 5G is mainly used for the preliminary infrastructure construction for Industry 4.0, while the specific application direction of 6G is still in the exploratory stage.
In the future, 6G will be used in scenarios such as spatial communication, intelligent interaction, tactile Internet, emotional and tactile communication, multi-sensory mixed reality, collaboration between machines, and fully automated transportation.
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