What is 6G?
6G is the name for the sixth generation of cellular networks, which will deliver truly omnipresent wireless intelligence. Expected to become available early in the 2030s, the 6G research journey is already well underway.
The vision for 6G is built on the desire to create a seamless reality where the digital and physical worlds as we know them today have merged. This merged reality of the future will provide new ways of meeting and interacting with other people, new possibilities to work from anywhere and new ways to experience faraway places and cultures.
By delivering ever-present intelligent communication, 6G will contribute to the creation of a more human-friendly, sustainable and efficient society.
Introducing the cyber-physical continuum
6G will make it possible to move freely in the cyber-physical continuum, between the connected physical world of senses, actions and experiences, and its programmable digital representation.
The cyber-physical continuum of 6G includes the metaverse as it is typically understood – a digital environment where avatars interact in a VR/AR world – and goes further, providing a much closer link to reality. In the cyber-physical continuum, it will be possible to project digital objects onto physical objects that are represented digitally, allowing them to seamlessly coexist as merged reality and thereby enhance the real world.
Future networks will be a fundamental component for the functioning of virtually all parts of life, society, and industries, fulfilling the communication needs of humans as well as intelligent machines. As accelerating automatization and digitalization continue to simplify people’s lives, the emerging cyber-physical continuum will continuously improve efficiency and ensure the sustainable use of resources.
Countless sensors will be embedded in the physical world to send data to update the digital representation in real time. Meanwhile, functions programmed in the digital representation will be carried out by actuators in the physical world. The purpose of the 6G network platform is to provide intelligence, ever-present connectivity and full synchronization to this emerging reality.