The research on the 6th generation (6G) wireless communication standard has already started, while 5G products are currently brought to the market and new digitization use cases are explored. 6G will be again ready in about a decade and will provide ultra-high reliability with lowest possible latency and radical energy efficiency by further improving 5G features. 6G will truly converge the physical and digital world in an augmented reality, that serves communication needs for humans and machines.
5G as a central component of digitization is in a global roll-out phase. It will provide highly reliable communication for industrial control systems, for cooperating robots and human-machine interaction. 5G will offer short latency of 5 millisecond as a prerequisite for a correct delivery of 99,999 % of data packets. 5G will also addressing the challenge of massive energy consumption by deploying IoT applications with low transmission requirements of only a few bits over a longer period of time.
For upcoming scenarios in the industrial arena like the control of high-precision manufacturing processes or the safety engineering of railway tracks further developments are required: 100µs latency, which is 50 times less than 5G, and a reliability of 99,99999 % for communication links. These properties will enable wireless 6G systems to steer facilities at industrial plants and to provide save autonomous transport systems. For all these advanced features new technologies are needed, therefore the research activities for 6G have already begun at AIT Austrian Institute of Technology.
