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Key Focus Areas and Enabling Technologies for 6G

Christopher G. Brinton, Mung Chiang, Kwang Taik Kim, David J. Love, Michael Beesley, Morris Repeta, John Roese, Per Beming, Erik Ekudden, Clara Li, Geng Wu, Nishant Batra, Amitava Ghosh, Volker Ziegler, Tingfang Ji, Rajat Prakash, John Smee

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of designing 6G to accommodate explosive device and data growth while aligning with societal goals like inclusion, sustainability, and security. It offers a taxonomy of 12 enabling technologies spanning radio access, network operation, computing–communication convergence, and deployment models, and discusses societal focus areas and regulatory implications. The work highlights near-, mid-, and far-term timelines, generic architectural shifts (e.g., open interfaces, cloud-native platforms, NTN integration), and research directions to address spectrum management, backhaul, AI governance, and post-quantum security. Together, these insights provide a comprehensive roadmap for standardization and research to achieve scalable, energy-efficient, trustworthy, and inclusive 6G.

Abstract

We provide a taxonomy of a dozen enabling network architectures, protocols, and technologies that will define the evolution from 5G to 6G. These technologies span the network protocol stack, different target deployment environments, and various perceived levels of technical maturity. We outline four areas of societal focus that will be impacted by these technologies, and overview several research directions that hold the potential to address the problems in these important focus areas.

Key Focus Areas and Enabling Technologies for 6G

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of designing 6G to accommodate explosive device and data growth while aligning with societal goals like inclusion, sustainability, and security. It offers a taxonomy of 12 enabling technologies spanning radio access, network operation, computing–communication convergence, and deployment models, and discusses societal focus areas and regulatory implications. The work highlights near-, mid-, and far-term timelines, generic architectural shifts (e.g., open interfaces, cloud-native platforms, NTN integration), and research directions to address spectrum management, backhaul, AI governance, and post-quantum security. Together, these insights provide a comprehensive roadmap for standardization and research to achieve scalable, energy-efficient, trustworthy, and inclusive 6G.

Abstract

We provide a taxonomy of a dozen enabling network architectures, protocols, and technologies that will define the evolution from 5G to 6G. These technologies span the network protocol stack, different target deployment environments, and various perceived levels of technical maturity. We outline four areas of societal focus that will be impacted by these technologies, and overview several research directions that hold the potential to address the problems in these important focus areas.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 22 sections, 6 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Societal Focus Areas
  3. Outline of 6G Technologies
  4. New Radio Access and Connectivity
  5. More MIMO
  6. Intermittent Connectivity and Communication
  7. Heterogeneous Latency Requirements
  8. Millimeter Wave and Sub-Terahertz Bands
  9. Enhanced Network Operation
  10. Non-Terrestrial Networks
  11. Backhaul Evolution with Increased Cell Density
  12. AI/ML-Based Network Optimization
  13. Computing and Communications Convergence
  14. Open Interface
  15. Platforms for Wireless Service
  16. ...and 7 more sections

Figures (6)

  • Figure 1: 6G technical focus areas organized by primary protocol layer, perceived technical readiness, and target deployment environment.
  • Figure 2: Sub-THz technology can be broadly clustered into functional enablers of access, backhaul, and sensing. Indicative mappings of these enablers to key use cases of 6G are shown. The sectoral relevance of these use cases is visualized on the right by weighted lines to key industry sectors.
  • Figure 3: Wireless backhaul as a coverage enhancer and service enabler (left) and as a bandwidth-efficient local capacity and bit rate booster in a macro-cell deployment with connected smaller cells (right).
  • Figure 4: Open interfaces in 5G RAN which must be reconsidered for 6G.
  • Figure 5: Fog computing aims to orchestrate computing resources along the cloud-to-things continuum, providing scalability for 6G services.
  • ...and 1 more figures