The earliest commercialisation of the next generation communication system dubbed 6G could occur as soon as 2028, according to Samsung.

Samsung in a white paper published on Tuesday said that considering the general trend in the progress of the communication system, 6G could be introduced in the market as early as 2028.

“Taking into account the trend of speeding up of the development of technical standards for each new generation, we expect that the completion of the 6G standard and its earliest commercialisation could happen as early as 2028, while massive commercialisation may occur around 2030,” Samsung said.

The South Korean electronics company further expects ITU-R, a sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) responsible for radio communication to begin its work on 6G by 2021.

“For 6G, we expect ITU-R will begin their work to define a 6G vision in 2021,” the paper read.

“The time spent for defining vision and developing technical standards for each successive generation has shortened from 15 years for 3G to 8 years for 5G,” Samsung said.

“This can be attributed to accelerating growth of technologies and market needs for mobile communications over the past decades,” Samsung said.

Never too late

“While 5G commercialisation is still in its initial stage, it’s never too early to start preparing for 6G because it typically takes around 10 years from the start of research to commercialisation of a new generation of communications technology,” said Sunghyun Choi, Head of the Advanced Communications Research Center.

“We’ve already launched the research and development of 6G technologies by building upon the experience and ability we have accumulated from working on multiple generations of communications technology, including 5G. Going forward, we are committed to leading the standardisation of 6G in collaboration with various stakeholders across industry, academia and government fields,” he said.

Hyper-connected world

According to the report, 6G will bring about a world of “hyperconnectivity” with usages that 5G currently cannot meet.

“Both humans and machines will be the main users of 6G, and 6G will be characterized by provision of advanced services such as truly immersive extended reality (XR), high-fidelity mobile hologram and digital replica,” Samsung said.

6G requirements

In its white paper, the company also outlined the requirements for 6G in terms of performance, architectural and trustworthiness requirements.

The new network will require a peak data rate of 1,000 Gbps (gigabits per second) and air latency less than 100 microseconds (μs), 50 times the peak data rate and one-tenth the latency of 5G, Samsung said.

Researchers would also need to resolve issues arising from the limited computation capability of mobile devices for 6G architecture. AI will play a major role in 6G implementation according to the report.

The white paper also highlighted other technologies that can be used to enable 6G including “terahertz (THz) frequency band, novel antenna technologies to enhance the coverage of high-frequency band signals, advanced duplex technologies, the evolution of network topology, spectrum sharing to increase the efficiency of frequency utilisation and the use of AI in wireless communications.”

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