The Roadmap to 6G -- AI Empowered Wireless Networks

TL;DR

Potential technologies for 6G to enable mobile AI applications, as well as AI-enabled methodologies for6G network design and optimization and key trends in the evolution to 6G are discussed.

Abstract

The recent upsurge of diversified mobile applications, especially those supported by Artificial Intelligence (AI), is spurring heated discussions on the future evolution of wireless communications. While 5G is being deployed around the world, efforts from industry and academia have started to look beyond 5G and conceptualize 6G. We envision 6G to undergo an unprecedented transformation that will make it substantially different from the previous generations of wireless cellular systems. In particular, 6G will go beyond mobile Internet and will be required to support ubiquitous AI services from the core to the end devices of the network. Meanwhile, AI will play a critical role in designing and optimizing 6G architectures, protocols, and operations. In this article, we discuss potential technologies for 6G to enable mobile AI applications, as well as AI-enabled methodologies for 6G network design and optimization. Key trends in the evolution to 6G will also be discussed.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: The roadmap of 6G.
• Figure 2: The architecture of 6G.
• Figure 3: Over-the-air computation for on-device distributed federated learning.
• Figure 4: On-device distributed inference via wireless MapReduce.
• Figure 5: A hardware-efficient hybrid beamforming structure with fixed phase shifters. The base station and user are equipped with 144 and 16 antennas, respectively, and 4 RF chains. The fully- and partially-connected structures require 576 and 144 adaptive phase shifters, respectively, while the new structure only requires 30 fixed phase shifters in the first simulation. The second simulation shows that 15 phase shifters are already sufficient for the new structure.