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During the National People’s Congress and the National People’s Congress, Minister of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong raised concerns about “accelerating 6G research and development”. Subsequently, on March 22, the Global 6G Technology Conference discussed 6G as the “super infrastructure” of the future digital world. On March 25, at the 2023 Annual Economic Summit of the China Development Forum, Liu Liehong, Chairman of China Unicom, predicted that 6G would be promoted to the stage of large-scale commercial use by 2030, and 6G once again became a hot topic in the industry.

Experts interviewed by the China Economic Times believe that from the perspectives of industrial promotion, global scale, and national planning, it is appropriate for China to start researching 6G at this time. However, the key to large-scale commercial use lies in the breakthrough of technology research and development, and 6G still faces multiple key technologies that need to be broken through.

Is it necessary to conduct 6G research as 5G commercial has not yet been fully implemented?

When 6G became the subject of discussion, there were also questions raised: “Is it necessary to start researching 6G as it is currently being commercialized

It is reported that as of the end of 2022, China has reached 2.312 million 5G base stations, and 600000 new base stations will be opened this year. It is planned to build more than 10000 5G factories during the 14th Five Year Plan period.

It’s not too early to lay out 6G now, “Ma Yuan, Deputy Director of the Enterprise Research Institute of the Development Research Center of the State Council, gave the answer in an interview with a reporter from the China Economic Times.

He stated that from the perspective of industrial promotion, China established the IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group in 2020 to plan and study the 6G vision requirements and potential key technologies in advance. In June 2021, the white paper “6G Overall Vision and Potential Key Technologies” was released, and in 2022, key technologies for 6G were solicited globally.

From a global perspective, in February 2020, the International Telecommunication Union officially launched research work for 2030 and the future (6G); In October 2020, the United States formed the “Next G Alliance”; In June 2021, the 5GIA (5G Infrastructure Association) in Europe released a report proposing a European 6G timetable, 6G goals, 6G architecture, and key 6G technologies. It can be said that 6G is the next technological highland and must be laid out ahead of schedule, “Ma Yuan said.

From the perspective of national planning, the “14th Five Year Plan for the Development of the Information and Communication Industry” released in November 2021, the “14th Five Year Plan for National Informatization” issued in December 2021, and the “14th Five Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy” issued in January 2022 all set clear tasks around the 6G technology vision, basic theory, technology research and development, and technology security.

Lu Ping, Vice President of CCID Consulting, expressed a similar view to reporters from China Economic Times. She believes that from the perspective of industrial development layout and building key core technological competitiveness, it is time to start laying out 6G. Reviewing the development process of 5G in China, it can be found that it is from 2013 to 2020 that 5G will be commercialized, which has put China in the first position in the application and innovation of the global “5G+” Industrial Internet.

She said that it is now 2023, and the goal of 6G is to achieve large-scale commercial use by 2030, which is also 8 years. If China wants to maintain the top position in network technology and industrial development, there is no reason not to make efforts to advance the layout of 6G technology, standard research and development, and industrial planning.

At the same time, she proposed that 6G is more important in terms of strategic significance. For example, through 6G networks, unmanned driving and drone control can be made more real-time, accurate, and safe. Smart transportation has entered a new era, and even artificial intelligence can actively assist people in transaction processing in production and life through 6G interconnection. These improvements will have a significant impact on the strategic layout of various industries in the country.

Research and development speed is the key to the large-scale commercial use of 6G by 2030

Liu Liehong believes that the information and communication industry basically presents the characteristics of “one generation in 10 years”, so 6G will still follow this pattern.

In response, Lv Ping proposed that the characteristic of ‘generation by generation’ depends on factors such as the research and development speed of each generation of technology, the maturity of standardized applications, and the acceptance and popularization of the market. Especially, the speed of technology research and development depends on the complexity of the next generation technology compared to the previous generation technology.

It took approximately 10 years for 4G to 5G, while it took 5-6 years for 3G to 4G, and some in the industry even believe that it only took 3 years. The more backward the technology develops, the more advanced it becomes, and the higher the complexity. The corresponding research and development cycle and the transition period towards mature market-oriented applications may also be longer. 6G may be based on satellites, while 5G and before were based on base station networking, and the basic technical conditions may undergo fundamental changes, “said Lv Ping. The “10 year generation” is an estimated time for analogizing 4G to 5G in the industry and extrapolating it to 5G to 6G.

Ma Yuan added that from the perspective of past development history, mobile communication technology has generally maintained the pace of evolution from 1G to 4G, with one generation per decade. 5G is no exception. The International Telecommunication Union began organizing preliminary research on 5G standardization as early as 2012, and the 3GPP organization completed the first version of the 5G standard, R15, in 2018. Despite the impact of the epidemic, the R16 standard was solidified in 2020, achieving the transformation of 5G from “usable” to “user-friendly”, becoming an important milestone in the commercial process of 5G; In 2022, the R17 standard was frozen, enriching the connotation of 5G networks from multiple perspectives such as terminals, networks, and frequency bands. Overall, it continues to release new versions every two years.

Ma Yuan believes that from the analysis of industry experts, it is likely that 6G will continue to move forward along the trajectory of “one generation in 10 years”.

6G development vision puts forward higher requirements for technology research and development

It is not difficult to see that the speed of technological research and development determines the “future fate” of 6G. So what are the difficulties in 6G research and development?

Ma Yuan pointed out that the development vision and typical scenarios of 6G have put forward higher requirements for technology research and development, including how to achieve the ultimate performance of strong connectivity, strong computing, strong intelligence, and strong security. From the 2023 Global 6G Technology Conference, there has been significant progress in research on key technologies such as terahertz communication, synesthesia integration, endogenous AI communication, deterministic networks, and satellite ground integration networks. Of course, to meet the ultimate performance requirements, Potential key technologies still need to be explored.

Lv Ping stated that from the perspective of “following up on 6G on the basis of 5G”, there may be at least three main technical difficulties in research and development: firstly, the problem of network architecture reconstruction. 2G to 5G all adopt a cellular network architecture constructed by multiple base stations. The current network architecture is difficult to adapt to the needs of 6G air space sea integrated network transmission, and the problem of information “packet loss” existing in traditional network protocols cannot meet the high transmission rate and low latency characteristics of 6G networks. In the absence of revolutionary breakthroughs in wireless transmission technology, network architecture remains the key to 6G research and development.

The second issue is the power consumption under the “dual carbon” goal. The 6G frequency band is higher, the cells are denser, and the energy consumption is greater than 5G. Carbon reduction will be a challenge in the development of 6G. Under the existing network architecture, the energy-saving and carbon reduction of 6G technology has a ceiling, and breakthroughs should be made in the infrastructure.

The third issue is information security. The 6G network carries the transmission and processing of massive amounts of data, and once it is stolen or tampered with, it will have a significant impact. The security architecture of the 6G network may be completely different from the current “external network security architecture”, and it needs to have endogenous security capabilities, requiring support from artificial intelligence and other technologies.