(Economic Observation) 5G is here, how far is 6G?

  China News Service, Beijing, March 12 (Reporter Liu Yuying) Although 5G is in the early commercial stage, many countries have begun to deploy 6G.

  The "14th Five-Year Plan" approved by the National People's Congress this year puts forward a "forward-looking layout of 6G network technology reserves."

Yang Zhen, the former president of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said that 6G will be the next commanding height of information and communication technology and industry, and it is also the focus of the next generation of information infrastructure, requiring a forward-looking layout.

  So what is 6G and what is the difference with 5G?

At present, many organizations and companies have put forward their views on 6G. Although the views are different, there are many consensuses.

  Yang Zhen believes that the characteristics of 6G will include: providing global coverage that currently cannot be provided by 5G; a positioning accuracy that is more than 10 times higher than that of 5G to centimeter level, and an end-to-end transmission delay of less than 1 millisecond; network nodes reaching tens of millions of levels Dense access capability; artificial intelligence AI technology plays a role in many aspects such as network and business perception.

  Bell Labs believes that the 6G era will be the complete interconnection and integration of the physical world, the digital world (information world), and the biological world (mainly human beings).

  The 6G-oriented "2030+ Vision and Demand Report" issued by China Mobile Research Institute believes that 6G will promote society to a "digital twin" world that combines virtual and reality.

Huang Yuhong, vice president of China Mobile Research Institute, said that the integrated development of space, space and ground has become a consensus in 6G.

  CCID Think Tank released the "6G Concept and Vision White Paper" in May 2020, trying to define 6G in terms of network access methods, network coverage, network performance indicators, network intelligence, and network service boundaries.

  Zhou Yuzhe, an associate researcher at the Institute of Radio Management of CCID Think Tank, told a reporter from China News Agency that based on the three major application scenarios of 5G (large bandwidth, massive connections, and ultra-low latency), 6G may develop human digital twins and high-speed Internet access in the air. , Application scenarios such as XR based on holographic communication, networked robots and autonomous systems.

  At present, many countries have launched 6G research.

The United States will open the 95 GHz to 3 terahertz frequency band as a test spectrum in 2020, and officially launch 6G technology research and development.

The European Union launched the 6G flagship research project Hexa-X in January 2021, and Nokia is the leader of the project.

South Korea and Japan are also stepping up their 6G deployment.

  However, although 6G is already a hot word in the news, it is still far away from commercial use.

  According to the plan of the International Organization for Standardization 3GPP, the organization will start research on 6G in 2023, and standardize 6G in the second half of 2025, complete the 6G standard in the first half of 2028, and will have 6G equipment products in the second half of 2028.

  Meng Pu, chairman of Qualcomm's China region, told a reporter from China News Agency that the "generations" of communication technology are divided according to the investment cycle of operators. The investment cycle of each generation in the past was about 8 to 10 years.

2019 is the first year of 5G commercial use. Therefore, according to the cycle of past mobile communication technologies, 6G is likely to be deployed in the networks actually operated by operators around 2028.

  Yu Xiaohui, president of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said that in accordance with the traditional laws of network development, 2020 to 2024 is the period of 5G network scale construction, 2025 to 2028 is the period of 5G network improvement, and 6G will be introduced around 2029.

  China started 6G research and development as early as 2019.

In November of that year, 6 ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Science and Technology jointly established a 6G R&D promotion group and an expert group.

China's first 6G test satellite named after the "University of Electronic Science and Technology" was successfully launched on November 6, 2020.

  Zhou Yuzhe stated that China’s 14th Five-Year Plan clearly proposes a forward-looking layout of 6G network technology, which is expected to accelerate the research of 6G candidate frequency bands and breakthroughs in 6G key technologies, grasp the leadership and voice of standards, and at the same time strengthen the international market Consensus and cooperation.

China has been in a leading position in the world in the 5G era, and it is expected to maintain its advantage in the 6G era.

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