Samsung releases its 6G white paper, aims at offering 1,000 GBPS peak data rate

The 5G mobile network is yet to make its way to the Indian telecom market. As we wait for the next-generation network, Samsung has announced that it is already working on 6G.

The South Korean tech giant has released a white paper entitled “The Next Hyper-Connected Experience for All.” outlining the company’s vision for 6G communication system. The white paper covers various aspects related to 6G, including technical and societal trends, new services, requirements, candidate technologies and an expected timeline of standardisation.

“While 5G commercialisation is still in its initial stage, it’s never too early to start preparing for 6G because it typically takes around 10 years from the start of research to commercialisation of a new generation of communications technology,” Sunghyun Choi, Head of the Advanced Communications Research Centre, said.

Samsung expects that the completion of the 6G standard and its earliest commercialisation date could be as early as 2028, while mass commercialisation may occur around 2030. The company claims that both humans and machines will be the main users of 6G, and will be characterised by the provision of advanced services such as truly immersive extended reality (XR), high-fidelity mobile hologram and digital replica.

The company defines three categories of requirements that have to be met to realise 6G services – performance, architectural and trustworthiness. 

Examples of 6G performance requirements are a peak data rate of 1,000 Gbps (gigabits per second) and air latency less than 100 microseconds (μs), 50 times the peak data rate and one-tenth the latency of 5G. 

The white paper also introduces candidate technologies that could be essential to satisfy the requirements for 6G. These include the use of the terahertz (THz) frequency band, novel antenna technologies to enhance the coverage of high-frequency band signals, advanced duplex technologies, the evolution of network topology, spectrum sharing to increase the efficiency of frequency utilisation and the use of AI in wireless communications.