How To Make 6G a General Purpose Technology: Prerequisites and value creation paradigm shift
Volker Ziegler, Seppo Yrjölä
Abstract
6G era and the post-pandemic future will be driven by the need and the opportunity to serve society and mankind in the 2030s by connecting the physical, digital and biological worlds. Novel use cases will provide value from augmenting human intelligence, creating new digital worlds and controlling the automatons for step change in efficiency and labor productivity and safety. We propose and explore a framework of 6G composite value from novel use cases as well as from 6G research, technology and architecture. Key components of the framework are input in terms of capital and labor, process and performance improvement, value output as well as ecosystem enabling parameters. Process and performance improvement will be driven by 6G enabling technologies such as pervasive Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, sub-Terahertz spectrum and new spectrum technologies, network co-design for radio sensing and communications and, technologies to cater for extreme connectivity requirements. A variety of innovations in 6G network architecture such as het-cloud transformation, leverage of specialized networks, radio access and core network convergence as well as novel security technologies for trust will be part of the anticipated technology push. Ecosystem enabling parameters will need to include open collaboration, vehicles of the shared economy such as open source as well as spectrum regulation aspects. Results indicate that 6G can be characterized as an emerging general-purpose technology being pervasive, having dynamism for continuous technical improvements, and enabling innovational complementarities across a wide range of industry sectors.