With a publishing date of 9 December, Shaping Future 6G Networks: Needs, Impacts and Technologies is the latest must-read for everyone  interested in “the realistic capabilities of 6G technologies” as well as exploring the societal and technology drivers that are driving the next generation of wireless networks”.

Edited by Dr Emmanuel Bertin, Professor Noël Crespi and Professor Thomas Magedanz, eminent telecom futurists, the book is an “holistic snapshot on the evolution of 5G technologies towards 6G”.

International key players in industry and academia have contributed to cut through the hype and provide insight into “the realistic capabilities of 6G technologies” as well as exploring the societal and technology drivers that are driving the next generation of wireless networks

Guy Redmill from RMA was happy to contribute, and his chapter is titled: 6G: The Path Toward Standardization. 

Of course, it’s an interesting and thought-provoking read.  Guy discusses how the standards for 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G were achieved - and shows how 6G could be standardized by 2030.

The process for agreeing a standard starts with the ITU producing an IMT (International Mobile Telecommunications) recommendation which defines expected performance levels.

However, the IMT does not define how the performance levels should be reached. 

With 3G we saw three technologies emerge under the IMT for 3G, IMT-2000. These were:

• UMTS
• CDMA 2000
• Mobile WiMAX

4G (defined by IMT-Advanced) can be provided by

• LTE and
• Mobile WiMAX.

Meanwhile 5G (with the IMT-2020 standard) initially saw a co-ordinated and unified approach which resulted in New Radio emerging as the delivery technology (or RAT – Radio Access Technology). Since then – and in an update to the research – other 5G candidates have emerged, despite the dominance of the 3GPP approach.

At the ITU, work is already underway toward 6G under the overall banner of IMT-2030. Issues being discussed include:

• What should a 6G network deliver
• What kind of novel forward-looking scenarios might 6G have to support
• What kinds of network architectures will be needed

Guy discusses whether the road to 6G will take a fragmented or co-ordinated approach i.e. 3G with its different competing technologies or 5G’s more unified approach.

He points out that the stakeholder ecosystem has changed dramatically in recent years and that there are a whole raft of factors that will influence the standardization of 6G including:

• The standard for 6G won’t just be agreed by the traditional players of the GSMA, operators and vendors. Spectrum holders, a myriad of trade organisations, in-country telecom standards associations, regional operators, Google, Facebook and Netflix all want to be involved.

• Mounting political pressure to find alternatives to High-Risk Vendors.

• New industry groups promoting open products that may support specific national initiatives - and could deviate from the current standards path led by the ITU.

Fascinating stuff. So don’t forget to pre-order your copy of Shaping Future 6G Networks: Needs, Impacts and Technologies which will be published in early December and available at Amazon or direct from Wiley.