The average mobile data usage per smartphone today has reached more than 10 GB per month and is expected to continue to grow by more than 20% per year. At the same time advanced mobile communication applications such as industry 4.0, VR/AR applications or autonomous cars require ultra-low latency. The required increase in data rate as well as the reduction in latency exceed what 5G technology can provide. Thus a more advanced standard, 6G, is required.
Wireless communication works by encoding information on electromagnetic waves. Wireless communication standards such as 3G, LTE, 5G, WiFi or Bluetooth differ among others by how much of the electromagnetic spectrum (bandwidth) they utilise. As a rule of thumb, in order to achieve higher data rates, a higher bandwidth has to be used by a given standard. As the electromagnetic spectrum is a finite resource, standards had to move to higher and higher frequencies where there was enough empty spectrum to accommodate larger bandwidths.
The exact specifications for 6G have not yet been set, but the frequency ranges of 57-71GHz and 110-170GHz are strong candidates. They offer lots of unutilized spectrum for very high bandwidths and can provide ultra-low latency.
Realising communication at these high frequencies and high bandwidths, however, poses significant technical challenges. Today, the technologies necessary to communicate on these frequency ranges are large, power intensive, costly and therefore far from being suitable for use in customer devices.
FirstTo6G is an ambitious European research project with the goal to develop the world’s first 6G transmitter and receiver (transceiver) microchip technology, that meets all the requirements for 6G to be widely adopted: providing extremely wide modulation bandwidth at high signal quality, high energy efficiency, and low cost.
Read on to find out more about our project and discover the technology we are developing and the project partners that make up our research consortium. As the project progresses, you will also find results and communication activities related to FirstTo6G, as well as all news in relation to our project.
Our breaking news
Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union, SNS JU or SERI. Neither the European Union nor the granting authorities can be held responsible for them.
