6G White Papers

Expert Groups Devising 6G Targets – Writing Process of New 6G White Papers on the Final Stretch

6G Flagship is pursuing a brave challenge to formulate a research vision for 6G mobile communications together with esteemed experts around the globe. white papers were chosen as a suitable format for refining experts’ views and alternative scenarios in the 6G domain. Having published world’s first 6G white paper in September 2019 as an outcome of the first 6G Wireless Summit, the visionaries in 6G Flagship wanted to reach much higher in the second round. A full dozen topics were filtered for a profound analysis.

“This time we wanted to dive much deeper by selecting 12 particular areas of interest needing more detailed envisioning and target setting,” says professor Matti Latva-aho, Director of 6G Flagship, who leads the preparation of the new white papers. “We wanted to add more openness and engage a larger number of leading experts in making this joint effort to pave the way towards 6G.”

6G Flagship released an open call for the 12 expert groups in November 2019. “Participation to the expert groups was open to anyone and not tied to 6G Wireless Summit participation,” Latva-aho says. “This way we succeeded in engaging 350 experts around the world for the white paper drafting which was a great result.”

Expert group members joined the writing process on a voluntary basis starting from January 2020. “Expert groups have developed critical KPIs for 6G and envisioned key research questions in different areas,” Latva-aho says. “At this stage, we chose not to fixate our thinking on narrow solutions or complete system models. Instead, we wanted to cultivate out-of-the-box thinking and discuss broadly about the most promising and even surprising combinations of technology components needed to make 6G a reality.”

Several draft white papers, which are available in arXiv starting from 30 April, address technical enablers for 6G and present a set of key research questions. The scope is quite broad covering broadband connectivity, remote areas connectivity, machine type communications, localization & sensing, security & privacy, machine learning, edge intelligence, networking, RF & spectrum, business models, validation & trials as well as UN SDGs influencing 6G development.

A multi-disciplinary approach on solving future challenges of the highly digitized society is clearly visible in several white papers. After all, there is a global consensus that 6G research should be aligned with the UN SDGs as a fundamental driver as both the technology leap and the develop goals target the year 2030. Business aspects are not forgotten either, as one white paper develops scenarios for the business of 6G considering key trends and depicting novel 6G digital service providers stemming from redefined sustainable economics.

The work of the expert groups shows that 6G research is still a collection of ideas, some of which are very promising while others are still strongly hampered by 5G thinking. “At this stage, we perceive that is pivotal to debate on relevant views with an open and daring mindset so that we can create a reliable base line that spurs research on multiple threads,” Latva-aho says. “With this set-up, we can expect to maximize the potential for scientific breakthroughs.”

The outcomes of the expert groups are quite remarkable taking into consideration that the draft white papers were prepared in just three months through a series of online meetings that the individual expert groups held. “Due to COVID-19, we had to cancel the physical event planned to take place during the 2nd 6G Wireless Summit which influenced the schedules of the expert groups,” Latva-aho says. “The amount of voluntary work that the community has put into these draft white papers, in these demanding circumstances, makes us very grateful and proud.”

During the next two months, the draft white papers will be edited for consistency before final publication towards end of June 2020. “The draft white papers, which are now available for the 6G community, will undergo a major alignment so that we can harmonize the concepts and terminologies to present a clear vision on various aspects of 6G,” says Dr. Marja Matinmikko-Blue, Research Coordinator of 6G Flagship, who coordinates the writing process of the white papers. “This process is a great exercise as we bring experts together to innovate on targets and alternative solutions. In this working mode, researchers and developers will have to rely on their expertise and hunch as none of us can yet rely on actual results, as we usually do. We will polish the white papers in content, graphics, and layout before they appear in June so that they will be a joy to read.”

The path towards 6G is becoming clearer as the open innovation progresses. “As a next step, we hope to make a serious effort in drafting a first version of requirements specification for IMT-2030,” Latva-aho concludes. “In our current thinking, we are aiming towards early 2021.”

Executive Summary

This white paper discusses the different business verticals that are expected to gain productivity enhancements with the introduction of B5G/6G wireless services. It is evident that wireless offers benefits when the use case exhibits mobility, requires nomadic behavior or flexibility, and in some situations cost may also be favoring wireless solutions (e.g. retrofitting). However, often a fiber optic solution is still a viable approach.

Based on revenue expansion potential as well as our evaluation of verticals with most significant opportunities, we have chosen for the discussion several vertical businesses along with future software-based testing. These include industry 4.0, future mobility, eHealth, energy, finance and banking, public safety and agribusiness.

In this white paper, we describe drivers in the respective verticals and the expected change. We also highlight the features within the verticals that may require 6G capabilities and consequently make a first attempt to provide a set of key performance and value indicators for the vertical businesses that highlight the divergence in requirements to be experienced in the 2030’s.

We conclude the discussion with proposed guidelines for trialing and validation activities within the verticals to agree upon golden references that provide a baseline against which any system provider can test their solutions. Based on the generated ideas and recommendations, we have formulated critical vertical-specific research questions to be answered during this decade in order to create the foreseen solutions.

Highlights

• We take a close look on 6G drivers within selected verticals and propose a set of key performance and value indicators
• We propose golden references for trialing within different verticals for commonly measurable results

Postal address
P.O.Box 4500
FI-90014 University of Oulu, Finland

Street address
Erkki Koiso-Kanttilan katu 3, 90570 Oulu, Finland

Email address
6GFlagship@oulu.fi
Staff e-mail addresses are typically in the firstname.lastname@oulu.fi format

List of Contributors

• Ari Pouttu (Ed.), University of Oulu, Finland
• Frank Burkhardt, Fraunhofer IIS, Germany
• Cristian Patachia, Orange, Romania
• Luciano Mendes, Inatel, Brazil
• Susanna Pirttikangas, University of Oulu, Finland
• Emery Jou, NCU, Taiwan
• Pasi Kuvaja, University of Oulu, Finland
• Marjo Heikkilä, Centria UAS, Finland
• Tero Päivärinta, University of Oulu, Finland
• Minna Isomursu, University of Oulu, Finland
• Abhishek Thakur, IDRBT, India
• Mika Mäntylä, University of Oulu, Finland
• Simon Watts, Avanti, United Kingdom
• Heidi Himmanen, Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom, Finland
• Lauri Lovén, University of Oulu, Finland
• Harilaos Koumaras, NCSR Demokritos, Greece

The focus of this white paper is on machine learning (ML) in wireless communications. 6G wireless communication networks will be the backbone of the digital transformation of societies by providing ubiquitous, reliable, and near-instant wireless connectivity for humans and machines. Recent advances in ML research has led enable a wide range of novel technologies such as self-driving vehicles and voice assistants. Such innovation is possible as a result of the availability of advanced ML models, large datasets, and high computational power. On the other hand, the ever-increasing demand for connectivity will require a lot of innovation in 6G wireless networks, and ML tools will play a major role in solving problems in the wireless domain.

In this paper, we provide an overview of the vision of how ML will impact the wireless communication systems. We first give an overview of the ML methods that have the highest potential to be used in wireless networks. Then, we discuss the problems that can be solved by using ML in various layers of the network such as the physical layer, medium access layer, and application layer. Zero-touch optimization of wireless networks using ML is another interesting aspect that is discussed in this paper. Finally, at the end of each section, important research questions that the section aims to answer are presented.

 

List of Contributors

• Samad Ali, University of Oulu, Finland
• Walid Saad, Virginia Tech, USA,
• Nandana Rajatheva, University of Oulu, Finland
• Kapseok Chang, ETRI, South Korea
• Daniel Steinbach, InterDigital Inc., USA
• Benjamin Sliwa, TU Dortmund University, Germany
• Christian Wietfeld, TU Dortmund University, Germany
• Kai Mei, University of Oulu, Finland
• Hamid Shiri, University of Oulu, Finland
• Hans-Jürgen Zepernick, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Thi My Chinh Chu, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Ijaz Ahmad, VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, Finland
• Jyrki Huusko, VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, Finland
• Jaakko Suutala, University of Oulu, Finland
• Shubhangi Bhadauria, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, Germany
• Vimal Bhatia, IIT Indore, India
• Rangeet Mitra, University of Quebec, Canada
• Saidhiraj Amuru, IIT Hyderabad, India
• Robert Abbas, Macquarie University, Australia
• Baohua Shao, Warwick Institute for the Science of Cities, UK
• Michele Capobianco, Capobianco – Business Innovation Management, Pordenone, Italy
• Guanghui Yu, ZTE Corporation, China,
• Maelick Claes, University of Oulu, Finland
• Teemu Karvonen, University of Oulu, Finland
• Mingzhe Chen, Princeton University, USA
• Maksym Girnyk, Ericsson Research, Sweden
• Hassan Malik, Prontominds O, Estonia