Ian Wong, director of radio frequency and wireless architecture at Viavi Solutions, said that future 6G systems should focus more on delivering new applications rather than just increasing the capacity of services already enabled by 4G and 5G.

Although 5G is still a work in progress and there are many ongoing developments ahead, many stakeholders are already discussing and testing components and systems that are likely to be incorporated into the next 6G.

At a high level, there is a disconnect between the projected capacity of 5G and the data needs of mobile networks. Cellular networks face this fundamental problem for the foreseeable future, and 6G may be at the heart of solving it. But how?

Sarah LaSelva, director of 6G marketing at Keysight Technologies, noted that while 6G is still in its early stages and much remains unknown, there are some high-level goals and technology trends that are possible.

Increasing network data capacity is possible, LaSelva said. Research is being done to understand how existing spectrum can be used more efficiently, and at the same time, research is starting to understand whether wireless communications can be pushed to higher frequencies, such as sub-sub-hertz and terahertz. However, the goal of 6G is not just to expand the capacity of existing networks. 6G aims to become 'G', making human life better by seamlessly integrating human-machine communication and machine-to-machine communication. "

Ian Wong, director of radio frequency and wireless architecture at Viavi Solutions, said that future 6G systems should focus more on providing new applications such as XR, AR and VR, as well as new applications in vertical fields, rather than just adding to what 4G and 5G networks have already achieved The capacity of the service. The focus should be more on delivering the really most impactful services...those are the things that really need to be stronger when we go into 6G. Overemphasizing ever higher data rates is not the right approach to the problem. Of course, people are always hungry for more data, but this is data that is ubiquitous for consumer applications. That will be the case in 5G, especially as we progress through the advanced stages of 5G. At that point the focus should be on making verticals like automotive more robust. These are the things that really benefit society more broadly.

Meanwhile, Andreas Roessler, technical manager at Rohde & Schwartz, said a key technical component being discussed for 6G is support for terahertz communications. The reason for this, it explained, is that at these frequencies, wider bandwidths are available, so data rates of up to 1 Tbps are possible. 6G will therefore add additional frequency layers on top of the sub-8 GHz and mmWave frequencies supported by today's 5G networks. However, as with mmWave frequencies, path loss will increase. Furthermore, terahertz communications pose challenges to today's semiconductor technologies, requiring the design of RF front-end and antenna systems capable of delivering sufficient output power and beamforming gain to overcome the high path loss encountered at these frequencies. Terahertz may further help address capacity crunch. Only where it makes sense, though.

Hiroaki Sato of the 6G Infrastructure Group of Fujitsu's Future Society and Technology Division believes that the growing demand for mobile network data requires increased wireless capacity, revised network topology and traffic control. Fujitsu believes it is necessary to use high-frequency bands, such as high-frequency millimeter waves and terahertz waves, to increase the capacity of wireless access itself, it said. It is also believed that it is necessary to introduce edge computing in the edge field and reduce the traffic of backbone networks such as the Internet by implementing IT application and content caching.

Danny Tseng, director of marketing at Qualcomm Technologies, said capacity is one of the fundamental aspects of any wireless network and will continue to grow as more use cases, devices and deployments are unlocked. To increase the capacity of any wireless network, it can be achieved by increasing the spectral efficiency or the amount of available spectrum,

One example of opening up more spectrum is using higher frequency bands like terahertz, which could open up a lot of capacity on the way to Tbps, Tseng explained. While 6G research is still in its infancy and it is difficult to determine exactly how it will meet future capacity needs, we have good ideas about how we can move towards meeting them. 6G will continue this evolution as 5G advanced technologies improve upon 5G.