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With a majority of users still holding on to 4G and telecom companies planning to make the next move towards 5G, the idea of 6G as yet, can be a floccinaucinihilipilification. I mean, just think about it, even before we have full access to 5G, we are eyeing at the next generation. There were rumours that 5G will be the last mobile standard to release, which will be kept up-to-date to meet performance improvements, and in a way, overcome the huge investment requirements to launch a whole new system. Going with this ideology, we’ll only see major upgrades to the 5G and no 6G as such. But for now, we need to know what 6G is and the things we can expect.

What is 6G?

Alike 3G, 4G, and 5G, 6G will be the next generation of wireless communication technology as standardized by the ITU(International Telecommunication Union). Wireless generations are marked by a break in “air interface”, which means a change in the transmission or encoding is introduced so that the device belonging to the previous generation cannot be upgraded to the new generation. New wireless generation networks use advanced digital encoding that the older computers aren’t powerful to decipher. They are made available on a new and wider band of airwaves through increasingly complex antenna systems. The world that we live in at present, contains more 4G and some amounts of 5G. The first version of the 5G network was developed in 2017 and today, 5G is still evolving. The fact that only 38 countries are using 5G so far, makes the 6G seem like a distant dream. According to Samsung, the ITU will begin work on defining a 6G vision in 2021 and will complete the same around 2028. Widespread deployment may still take another year or two to realize.

The idea of 6G

Since the 5G is here, an increasing number of academics and tech giants have started to prepare for their most innovative inventions which they don’t have now but look forward to building in the future. The whole idea of 6G is driven by the advancements in technology that could help shape ideas into reality. All of this sounds even more exciting as they help shape or rather transform social media, telecommunication and the technology we use today. Research says, 6G will be all about transmitting data at ultra-high frequencies. Unlike 5G which is said to reach up to 100GHz, 6G can be used to transmit data on waves in the Terahertz(THz) range. The interesting part- these waves are tiny and fragile, but provided there’s a huge amount of free spectrum still available, achieving spectacular data rates won’t be a hassle.

Challenges

Massive amounts of unsolved challenges surround the use case scenario. Some among them being the unavailability of semiconductor materials capable of exploiting multi-THz frequencies. Having a range out of these frequencies will require enormous arrays of tiny antennas. Water vapor in the atmosphere will block and reflect waves on this frequency, leading to added challenges for mathematicians who will need to design models allowing data packets to take the complex route.

The final word

There is still a lot unknown about 6G and what the future will hold. However, we can expect seamless connectivity on the go. People will be able to inhabit and manipulate robotic tools to their purpose, even remotely, with near-instantaneous responses. Well, these are just ideas, a vision that we carry and things we look forward to. Being able to access true 6G is only going to be possible in some ten years from now. Till then, we’ll focus on research and making the full use of what we already have.