Page 9 - EngineerIT March 2022

Transitioning from 5G to 6G with the help of our technology journeys development of 6G and the creation of the
At Ericsson Research, a vital part of our job is predicting the needs of both our customers networked reality. Technological advances
and our customers’ customers at least ten years into the future. When we set out to invent in all of these areas will be necessary
a new generation of mobile technology, we do it to address new and emerging needs for the future network to support the
that the current technology cannot meet. To do so, we have to find the best technologies convergence of the physical and digital
that can fully cover the new requirements. We need to take the whole application and worlds.
developer ecosystem into account and consider the maturity of everything, from chipset
development to investment cycles. This is why it typically takes about ten years to develop Conclusion
and release a completely new generation. Looking back at our earliest technology
2030 is the time frame when we expect 6G to emerge as the intelligent network trends articles, it’s gratifying to see how
platform designed to support the networked reality. To guide our research agenda on the much of what we predicted six to seven
path ahead, we have defined a set of eight technology journeys that summarise our view of years ago has become a reality today with
technology evolution up until 2030. 5G. As the pace of technological change
Four of these journeys focus on future use cases, detailing the demanding continues to accelerate, we think it’s more
requirements that they will place on the network platform and proposing new capabilities important than ever for companies that
to meet them. The other four – limitless connectivity, trustworthy systems, cognitive want to establish or maintain positions of
network and network compute fabric – focus on the evolution of the intelligent network market leadership, to stay on top of the
platform itself. emerging technologies that may have an
impact on their businesses in the coming
6G is fundamental to the networked reality decade. I believe that our technology
Ericsson’s primary role in creating the networked reality is to build and orchestrate the journeys, vision stories and trends articles
intelligent networks that can support the kinds of advanced XR technologies required can help you do just that.
by the internet of senses, connected intelligent machines and other digital solutions of At Ericsson, we understand that
the future. This will be a big part of 6G. Future networks must be capable of connecting the transition toward the networked
multiple experiences over a broad range of devices and locations, where service assurance reality is going to be a long-term journey
is guaranteed no matter what is being demanded, to make the experience optimal. for everyone involved – consumers,
Future networks will also need to be able to handle extreme performance enterprises, those that build applications,
requirements – data rates, end-to-end latency, reliability and energy efficiency – as well governments and more. That’s why it’s
as having the ability to transfer and understand vast arrays of data. They must always so important that we’re all aware of
be open to ever smarter solutions, including flexible spectrum usage and multiple what’s coming so that we can plan ahead,
frequencies. Finally, the network itself must become smarter, capable of acting as a share our insights and ideally even work
sensor and using AI-enabled decision-making to adapt to its environment and to ensure together in joint research projects. To make
optimal performance. the unimaginable possible and truly be
prepared to capitalise on the commercial
2021 technology trends – the path toward 6G realities of tomorrow, we must dare to
The five trends that our CTO Erik Ekudden highlights in this year’s trends article – digital collaborate on all kinds of potential future
representation, adaptable limitless connectivity, integrity of trustworthy systems, use cases – perhaps especially the ones
federated cognitive networks and a unified network compute fabric – are all central to the that seem fantastically futuristic today. n

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