What connectivity options are available to engineers?
When it comes to developing wireless devices, engineers have a wide range of different communication technologies available to them. However, choosing the right technology for their application is an essential development stage; making the wrong choice could see the need for designs to be scrapped and started from scratch.
Wireless technologies have three main characteristics whereby only two can ever be optimized. These characteristics are bandwidth (the amount of data that can be transmitted per second), energy, and range. A wireless technology that can extend a long way with a high bandwidth will undoubtedly require large amounts of power, while a long-range, low-energy solution will not be able to transmit large amounts of information.
If energy consumption is the biggest concern for a design, engineers have the choice to look at LoRaWAN, Bluetooth, or UWB. LoRaWAN has the added advantage that it can operate at great lengths (more than 15 km on a good day); Bluetooth can work with a wide range of devices, including smartphones; and UWB can provide precision positioning between devices.
If bandwidth is the most important factor in a design, engineers can look at Wi-Fi and cellular, as these are both designed with internet access in mind. Wi-Fi operates at a lower range than cellular (up to 100 meters, assuming a clear day with no obstacles between an access point and a device), but in return uses less power. Cellular, however, can roam between different access points without facing long reconnection times, but the high bandwidth and long range comes at the cost of increased power consumption.
For those looking to maximize range, then the only two reliable options are either cellular or LoRaWAN, and this choice can be easily simplified by deciding whether bandwidth or energy is the most important. If energy consumption is more important than bandwidth, then LoRaWAN is the logical choice, and vice versa for cellular.
What does 6G offer?
6G is an emerging cellular technology that is still in active development, and there are currently no devices or demonstrations showing the future network. Furthermore, specific figures around 6G have not yet been published by any entity, as the standard has still not been decided upon (5G is still in the process of being rolled out around the world).
However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t research on 6G, nor does it mean we can’t make educated guesses as to what it will provide. Additionally, telecom companies and researchers alike have already made statements about what they expect to find in 6G, so combining all of this gives us a basic idea of what 6G will do.
The most impressive statement that has been said about 6G is that it is slated to be the first unified network, meaning that it will not be designed with just cellular in mind but home devices, smart cities, IoT, and IIoT. This unified network would not require individuals to have their own internet access points and instead would rely on cellular masts that can provide coverage in all rooms of all homes in sight. Just like current cellular networks, the access point that you would connect to would be the same as that of your neighbor.
Regarding what radio spectrum would be used, there is a lot of talk of terahertz frequencies, which would place 6G signals between microwave and infrared. Researchers have already been able to demonstrate terahertz chips capable of transferring 1 TB of data over 1 km in a second, while other researchers have demonstrated terahertz data transmission of 206 Gbps.
If 6G can operate at such speed and service devices in homes, it will also likely have strong beamforming capabilities to prevent interference between devices. Furthermore, using 6G as a primary internet connection for home devices would also require low latencies and high device support.
How does 6G compare with 5G?
Because the details around 6G are extremely vague at the best of times, comparing the future network with 5G is somewhat premature. However, if we look at what we know around 6G, and how it will undoubtedly be an improvement over 5G, we can make some assumptions when comparing the two.
The biggest difference by far between the two network technologies will be the speed improvement thanks to the use of terahertz frequencies. 5G has a maximum speed of 10 Gbps, which is anywhere between 10× and 100× the speed of what 4G offers, and this makes sense when considering that 100× this number is 1 Tbps. So realistically, we can expect 6G to have connection speeds between 50 Gbps and 200 Gbps. Anything beyond this may not be technically feasible, and keep in mind that the average 5G user will see speeds of about 100 Mbps, which is significantly lower than its theoretical maximum.
The second major difference that will be noticeable is that 6G will support far more devices than what 5G is able to do. In fact, it is likely that the increased bandwidth of 6G will not translate into a speed increase over 5G but instead support for many thousands of simultaneous connections. For example, if 6G towers are designed for 1 Tbps, then this could potentially support over 10,000 devices at the same time, all having a download speed of 100 Mbps (this is more than sufficient for most applications).
This increase in bandwidth will also translate into lower connection latencies, which will be essential for future applications involving vehicle-to-everything. The reduced latency will allow devices across the network to talk to each other with minimal delay, and this would allow for wearable electronics to report their position to nearby vehicles. Such a system would allow for intelligent car control systems to automatically break when a pedestrian is detected, regardless of road conditions or on-board sensors.
Will 6G make all other network technologies redundant?
The short answer to this question is no, and this is because such a future network will likely have high energy requirements. Of course, it is more than possible for network operators to simultaneously set up a secondary cellular network with a strong focus on energy reduction (such as an IoT version of 6G), but even then, there will be many applications that would do better with other technologies such as Bluetooth or UWB.
Furthermore, technologies such as LoRaWAN offer extremely long ranges while using minimal amounts of energy, and this is particularly advantageous in remote IoT applications (such as farms and forests). No amount of 6G towers would ever be able to compete with a 433-MHz signal that can go for many miles that needs to carry only a handful of bytes of information.
Bluetooth would still be important for devices that intend to connect over a few meters, with one common example being wireless headphones. The low-energy nature and small range of Bluetooth means that it doesn’t interfere with larger networks (such as Wi-Fi and cellular), and the use of Bluetooth would help to keep the overall usage of other networks down.
Finally, the use of Wi-Fi to create private networks allows for users to control their local traffic, see who has access to their internet connection, and create internal services that they only want accessible inside the network (such as a local cloud server or NAS).
Should engineers bother with 5G?
One may be wondering that if 6G becomes the unified network of the future, is it worth bothering with 5G in IoT and smart-city projects? The answer to this question is an outstanding yes.
First, 6G is not expected to become a reality until 2030 at the earliest. Some companies have release dates of 2028, but it is likely that 5G will continue to be operational for a long time thanks to its many improvements over 4G. As such, waiting to develop IoT projects with 6G in mind will see extremely long wait times, all of which could be put to good use by designing hardware and proving that cellular networks can be used for such applications.
Second, by utilizing 5G networks, cellular operators will be encouraged to continue investing in the field while making additions to the future 6G specification that will support engineers. If network operators see that only cellular devices are using their networks, then 6G may only be directed toward mobile device manufacturers instead of emerging markets such as IoT and IIoT, all of which could heavily benefit from 6G.
6G has real potential to become the first network that isn’t directed at one specific type of device, and the high speed and high device count it supports could usher in a new era for large-scale networks. But unless engineers develop 5G projects to demonstrate how cellular networks can be used in IoT, cellular operators may not pursue 6G with IoT in mind.