1

Towards 6G Networks: Use Cases and Technologies

Marco Giordani, Member, IEEE, Michele Polese, Member, IEEE,
Marco Mezzavilla, Senior Member, IEEE, Sundeep Rangan, Fellow, IEEE, Michele Zorzi, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—Reliable data connectivity is vital for the ever The above discussion has recently motivated researchers
increasingly intelligent, automated and ubiquitous digital world. to look into a new generation of wireless networks, i.e.,
Mobile networks are the data highways and, in a fully connected, sixth generation (6G) systems, to meet the demands for a
intelligent digital world, will need to connect everything, from
people to vehicles, sensors, data, cloud resources and even robotic fully connected, intelligent digital world. Along these lines,
agents. Fifth generation (5G) wireless networks (that are being the broad purpose of this paper is to understand which
currently deployed) offer significant advances beyond LTE, but technologies can identify 6G networks and provide more
may be unable to meet the full connectivity demands of the future capable and vertical-specific wireless networking solutions.
arXiv:1903.12216v2 [cs.NI] 4 Feb 2020

digital society. Therefore, this article discusses technologies that Specifically, the paper considers several potential scenarios for
will evolve wireless networks towards a sixth generation (6G),
and that we consider as enablers for several potential 6G use future connected systems, and attempts to estimate their key
cases. We provide a full-stack, system-level perspective on 6G requirements in terms of throughput, latency, connectivity and
scenarios and requirements, and select 6G technologies that can other factors. Importantly, we identify several use cases that go
satisfy them either by improving the 5G design, or by introducing beyond the performance of the 5G systems under development
completely new communication paradigms. today, and demonstrate why it is important to think about the
I. I NTRODUCTION long term evolutions beyond 5G. Our analysis suggests that,
in order to meet these demands, radically new communication
Each generation of mobile technology, from the first to the
technologies, network architectures, and deployment models
fifth (5G), has been designed to meet the needs of end users
will be needed. In particular, we envision:
and network operators, as shown in Fig. 1. However, nowadays
societies are becoming more and more data-centric, data- • Novel disruptive communication technologies: although
dependent and automated. Radical automation of industrial 5G networks have already been designed to operate at
manufacturing processes will drive productivity. Autonomous extremely high frequencies, e.g., in the mmWave bands
systems are hitting our roads, oceans and air space. Millions in NR, 6G could very much benefit from even higher
of sensors will be embedded into cities, homes and production spectrum technologies, e.g., through Terahertz and opti-
environments, and new systems operated by artificial intelli- cal communications.
gence residing in local ’cloud’ and ’fog’ environments will • Innovative network architectures: despite 5G advance-
enable a plethora of new applications. ments towards more efficient network setups, the het-
Communication networks will provide the nervous system erogeneity of future network applications and the need
of these new smart system paradigms. The demands, however, for 3D coverage calls for new cell-less architectural
will be daunting. Networks will need to transfer much greater paradigms, based on the tight integration of different
amounts of data, at much higher speeds. Furthering a trend communication technologies, for both access and back-
already started in 4G and 5G, sixth generation (6G) connec- haul, and on the disaggregation and virtualization of the
tions will move beyond personalized communication towards networking equipment.
the full realization of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, • Integrating Intelligence in the Network: we expect 6G to
connecting not just people, but also computing resources, ve- bring intelligence from centralized computing facilities to
hicles, devices, wearables, sensors and even robotic agents [1]. end terminals, thereby providing concrete implementation
5G made a significant step towards developing a low to distributed learning models that have been studied from
latency tactile access network, by providing new additional a theoretical point of view in a 5G context. Unsupervised
wireless nerve tracts through (i) new frequency bands (e.g., the learning and knowledge sharing will promote real-time
millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum), (ii) advanced spectrum network decisions through prediction.
usage and management, in licensed and unlicensed bands, and Prior publications (most notably [2], [3]) have discussed 6G
(iii) a complete redesign of the core network. Yet, the rapid communications. This article, distinctively, adopts a systematic
development of data-centric and automated processes, which approach in analyzing the research challenges associated to 6G
require a datarate in the order of terabits per second, a latency networks, providing a full-stack perspective, with considera-
of hundreds of microseconds, and 107 connections per km2 , tions related to spectrum usage, physical, medium access and
may exceed even the capabilities of the emerging 5G systems. higher layers, and network architectures and intelligence for
6G. We transfer into our work a multifaceted critical spirit
Marco Giordani, Michele Polese and Michele Zorzi are with the Department
of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Padova, Italy (email: too, having selected, out of several possible innovations, the
{giordani, polesemi, zorzi}@dei.unipd.it). Marco Giordani and Michele solutions that in our view show the highest potential for future
Polese are primary co-authors. 6G systems. While some of them appear to be incremental,
Marco Mezzavilla and Sundeep Rangan are with NYU WIRELESS, Tandon
School of Engineering, New York University, Brooklyn, NY, USA (email: we believe that the combination of breakthrough technologies
{mezzavilla, srangan}@nyu.edu) and evolutions of current networks deserves to be identified
 2

innovation

6G
6G will contribute to fill the gap between beyond- New Spectrum
2020 societal and business demands and what 5G
(and its predecessors) can support 1-10 Gbps
Disruptive Technologies
5G
100-1000 Mbps Cell-less Networks

2 Mbps 4G Disaggregation and

virtualization

2.4 Kbps
64 Kbps
3G
Energy Efficiency
1G 2G
Artificial Intelligence

Internet of Massive broadband and

Voice calling SMS Internet Applications Internet of Things Towards a Fully Digital and Connected World
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2025-2030 time

Fig. 1: Evolution of cellular networks, from 1G to 6G, with a representative application for each generation.

as a new generation of mobile networks, as these solutions and decoding is a time-consuming process), thus the per-user
have not been thoroughly addressed or cannot be properly data rate needs to touch the Gbps, in contrast to the more
included in current 5G standards developments, and, therefore, relaxed 100 Mbps 5G target.
will not be part of commercial 5G deployments. We expect our Holographic Telepresence (Teleportation): The human
investigation to promote research efforts towards the definition tendency to connect remotely with increasing fidelity will pose
of new communication and networking technologies to meet severe communication challenges in 6G networks. [4] details
the boldest requirements of 6G use cases. the datarate requirements of a 3D holographic display: a raw
hologram, without any compression, with colors, full parallax,
II. 6G U SE C ASES and 30 fps, would require 4.32 Tbps. The latency requirement
5G presents trade-offs on latency, energy, costs, hardware will hit the sub-ms, and thousands of synchronized view angles
complexity, throughput, and end-to-end reliability. For exam- will be necessary, as opposed to the few required for VR/AR.
ple, the requirements of mobile broadband and ultra-reliable, Moreover, to fully realize an immersive remote experience, all
low-latency communications are addressed by different con- the 5 human senses are destined to be digitized and transferred
figurations of 5G networks. 6G, on the contrary, will be across future networks, increasing the overall target data rate.
developed to jointly meet stringent network demands (e.g., eHealth: 6G will revolutionize the health-care sector,
ultra-high reliability, capacity, efficiency, and low latency) in eliminating time and space barriers through remote surgery
a holistic fashion, in view of the foreseen economic, social, and guaranteeing health-care workflow optimizations. Besides
technological, and environmental context of the 2030 era. the high cost, the current major limitation is the lack of
In this section, we review the characteristics and foreseen real-time tactile feedback [5]. Moreover, the proliferation
requirements of use cases that, for their generality and com- of eHealth services will challenge the ability to meet their
plementarity, are believed to well represent future 6G services. stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, i.e., con-
Fig. 2 provides a comprehensive view on the scenarios in terms tinuous connection availability (99.99999% reliability), ultra-
of different Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). low latency (sub-ms), and mobility support. The increased
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR): spectrum availability, combined with the refined intelligence of
4G systems unlocked the potential of video-over-wireless, 6G networks, will guarantee these KPIs, together with 5-10x
one of the most data-hungry applications at the time. The gains in spectral efficiency [1].
increasing use of streaming and multimedia services currently Pervasive Connectivity: Mobile traffic is expected to
justifies the adoption of new spectrum (i.e., mmWaves) to grow 3-fold from 2016 to 2021, pushing the number of mobile
guarantee higher capacity in 5G. However, this multi-Gbps devices to the extreme, with 107 devices per km2 in dense
opportunity is attracting new applications which are more data- areas (up from 106 in 5G) [1] and more than 125 billion
heavy than bi-dimensional multimedia content: 5G will trigger devices worldwide by 2030. 6G will connect personal devices,
the early adoption of AR/VR. Then, just like video-over- sensors (to implement the smart city paradigm), vehicles,
wireless saturated 4G networks, the proliferation of AR/VR and so on. This will stress already congested networks,
applications will deplete the 5G spectrum, and require a which will not provide connectivity to every device while
system capacity above 1 Tbps, as opposed to the 20 Gbps meeting the requirements of Fig. 2. Moreover, 6G networks
target defined for 5G [1]. Additionally, to meet the latency will require a higher overall energy efficiency (10-100x with
requirements that enable real-time user interaction in the im- respect to 5G), to enable scalable, low-cost deployments, with
mersive environment, AR/VR cannot be compressed (coding low environmental impact, and better coverage. Indeed, while
 3

5G: 100 Mbps

AR/VR Per-user data rate

Experience
6G: 1 Gbps
6G use cases will merge these applications

sharing
5G: 20 Gbps Peak data rate
6G: > 1 Tbps
Telepresence
e.g., unmanned mobility with VR/AR streaming

5G: > 1 ms Air-interface latency

6G: ~ 100 µs

eHealth 5G: 99.999 % (32 byte, 1 ms latency)

6G: > 99.99999 Reliability

5G: > 1 ms
Remote

Industry 4.0 Air-interface latency

control

6G: ~ 100 µs

5G: 1x
6G: 5x from 5G
Spectrum efficiency
Unmanned
only for unmanned mobility
mobility 5G: 500 km/h
6G: 1000 km/h Vehicle speed
5G: 1x
6G: 5x from 5G Spectrum efficiency
Connecting
everything

Pervasive 5G: 100 Mbps

6G: 1 Gbps Per-user data rate
connectivity 5G: 106 connections/km2
6G: 107 connections/km2 Number of devices
5G: 1x
6G: 10-100x Energy efficiency

Network management Latency and reliability Capacity

Fig. 2: Representation of multiple KPIs of 6G use cases, together with the improvements with respect to 5G networks, using data from [1]–[9].

80% of the mobile traffic is generated indoors, 5G cellular drones) represent a huge potential for various scenarios (e.g.,
networks, which are being mainly deployed outdoors and may construction, first responders). Swarms of drones will need
be operating in the mmWave spectrum, will hardly provide improved capacity for expanding Internet connectivity. In this
indoor connectivity as high-frequency radio signals cannot perspective, 6G will pave the way for connected vehicles
easily penetrate dielectric materials (e.g., concrete). 6G net- through advances in hardware, software, and the new con-
works will instead provide seamless and pervasive connectivity nectivity solutions we will discuss in Sec. III.
in a variety of different contexts, matching stringent QoS This wide diversity of use cases is a unique characteristic of
requirements in outdoor and indoor scenarios with a cost- the 6G paradigm, whose potential will be fully unleashed only
aware and resilient infrastructure. through breakthrough technological advancements and novel
Industry 4.0 and Robotics: 6G will fully realize the network designs, as described in the next section.
Industry 4.0 revolution started with 5G, i.e., the digital trans-
formation of manufacturing through cyber physical systems III. 6G E NABLING T ECHNOLOGIES
and IoT services. Overcoming the boundaries between the In this section, we present the technologies that are rapidly
real factory and the cyber computational space will enable emerging as enablers of the KPIs for the 6G scenarios foreseen
Internet-based diagnostics, maintenance, operation, and direct in Sec. II. In particular, Table I summarizes potentials and
machine communications in a cost-effective, flexible and effi- challenges of each proposed technological innovation and
cient way [6]. Automation comes with its own set of require- suggests which of the use cases introduced in Sec. II they
ments in terms of reliable and isochronous communication [7], empower. Although some of these innovations have already
which 6G is positioned to address through the disruptive set been discussed in the context of 5G, they were deliberately left
of technologies we will describe in Sec. III. For example, out of early 5G standards developments (i.e., 3GPP NR Re-
industrial control requires real-time operations with guaranteed leases 15 and 16) and will likely not be implemented in com-
µs delay jitter, and Gbps peak data rates for AR/VR industrial mercial 5G deployments because of technological limitations
applications (e.g., for training, inspection). or because markets are not mature enough to support them.
Unmanned mobility: The evolution towards fully au- We consider physical layer breakthroughs in Sec. III-A, new
tonomous transportation systems offers safer traveling, im- architectural and protocol solutions in Sec. III-B, and finally
proved traffic management, and support for infotainment, disruptive applications of artificial intelligence in Sec. III-C.
with a market of 7 trillion USD [8]. Connecting autonomous
vehicles demands unprecedented levels of reliability and low
latency (i.e., above 99.99999% and below 1 ms, respectively), A. Disruptive Communication Technologies
even in ultra-high mobility scenarios (up to 1000 km/h), A new generation of mobile networks is generally char-
to guarantee passenger safety, a requirement that is hard to acterized by a set of novel communication technologies that
satisfy with existing technologies. Moreover, the increasing provide unprecedented performance (e.g., in terms of available
number of sensors per vehicle will demand increasing data data rate and latency) and capabilities. For example, massive
rates (with Terabytes generated per driving hour [9]), beyond Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) and mmWave com-
current network capacity. In addition, flying vehicles (e.g., munications are both key enablers of 5G networks. In order
 4
4

TABLEI:I:Comparison
TABLE Comparison of
of 6G
6G enabling
enabling technologies
technologies and
and relevant
relevantuse
usecases.
cases.

Enabling Technology Potential Challenges Use cases

New Spectrum
High bandwidth, small antenna size, Circuit design, high propagation Pervasive connectivity, industry 4.0, holo-
Terahertz
focused beams loss graphic telepresence
Low-cost hardware, low interfer- Limited coverage, need for RF up-
VLC Pervasive connectivity, eHealth
ence, unlicensed spectrum link
Novel PHY techniques
Management of interference,
Full duplex Continuous TX/RX and relaying Pervasive connectivity, industry 4.0
scheduling
Out-of-band channel Flexible multi-spectrum communi- Need for reliable frequency map- Pervasive connectivity, holographic telep-
estimation cations ping resence
Novel services and context-based Efficient multiplexing of communi-
Sensing and localization eHealth, unmanned mobility, industry 4.0
control cation and localization
Innovative Network Architectures
Multi-connectivity and Seamless mobility and integration Scheduling, need for new network Pervasive connectivity, unmanned mobility,
cell-less architecture of different kinds of links design holographic telepresence, eHealth
Ubiquitous 3D coverage, seamless Modeling, topology optimization Pervasive connectivity, eHealth, unmanned
3D network architecture
service and energy efficiency mobility
Disaggregation and Lower costs for operators for High performance for PHY and Pervasive connectivity, holographic telep-
virtualization massively-dense deployments MAC processing resence, industry 4.0, unmanned mobility
Advanced access-backhaul Flexible deployment options, Scalability, scheduling and interfer-
Pervasive connectivity, eHealth
integration outdoor-to-indoor relaying ence
Energy-harvesting and Energy-efficient network operations, Need to integrate energy source
Pervasive connectivity, eHealth
low-power operations resiliency characteristics in protocols
Intelligence in the network
Pervasive connectivity, eHealth,
Learning for value of Intelligent and autonomous selec-
Complexity, unsupervised learning holographic telepresence, industry 4.0,
information assessment tion of the information to transmit
unmanned mobility
Need to design novel sharing mech-
Knowledge sharing Speed up learning in new scenarios Pervasive connectivity, unmanned mobility
anisms
User-centric network Distributed intelligence to the end- Real-time and energy-efficient pro- Pervasive connectivity, eHealth, industry
architecture points of the network cessing 4.0
Not considered in 5G With new features/capabilities in 6G

circuitry. As for mmWaves, the propagation loss can and 802.15.7, respectively), these technologies have not yet
to meetbethe compensated
requirements usingthatdirectional
we described antenna arrays,
in Sec. II, also
6G been antenna
includedcircuitry.
in a cellular network standard, and will be
enabling spatial multiplexing with limited
networks are expected to rely on conventional spectrum (i.e., interference. targeting beyond
• VLC have been 5G use cases. Moreover,
proposed to complement additional research
RF communi-
Furthermore,
sub-6 GHz Terahertzbut
and mmWaves) communication
also on frequency performance
bands that can is still
cations by piggybacking on the wide adoption ofin cheap
required to enable 6G mobile users to operate the
be maximized by operating in frequency
have not yet been considered for cellular standards, namely bands not THz Light
and VLC spectra, including hardware and
Emitting Diode (LED) luminaries. These devices algorithms for
severely affected by molecular absorption
the Terahertz band and Visible Light Communications (VLC). [10], as shown flexible multi-beam acquisition and tracking in
can indeed quickly switch between different light inten- Non-Line-of-
in Fig. 3. the
Fig. 3 represents Finally, suchforhigh
pathloss eachfrequencies,
of these bands, when limited
in typical Sightsities
(NLOS) environments.
to modulate a signal which can be transmitted to a
deployment scenarios, in order to highlight the differencesultra-
to indoor-to-indoor scenarios, enable new kinds of and Besides
proper receiverspectrum,
the new [11]. The6G will also
research transform
on VLC is morewireless
mature
small-scale electronic packaging solutions for the RF and networks by leveraging a set of technologies that have been to
the opportunities that each portion of the spectrum can exploit. than that on Terahertz communications, also thanks
antenna circuitry. enabled by recent physical layer and circuits research, but are in
In the following paragraphs, we will focus on the two novel a lower cost of experimental platforms. As reported
• VLC have been proposed to complement RF communi- not part of 5G. The following will be key enablers for 6G:
spectrum bands that will be used in 6G. Fig. 3, VLC have limited coverage range, require an
cations by piggybacking on the wide adoption of cheap
• Terahertz communications operate between 100 GHz • Full-duplex communication
illumination source, stack.shot
and suffer from With
noisefull-duplex
from other
Light Emitting Diode (LED) luminaries. These devices
and communications,
light sources (e.g., the the
transceivers
sun), thus willcan
be becapable
mostly of re-
used
can10indeed
THz [10] and,switch
quickly comparedbetween to mmWaves,
different light bring to
inten-
thesities
extreme the potential of which
high-frequency connectivity, ceiving
indoors a[11].signal while alsothey
Moreover, transmitting,
need to bethanks to care-
complemented
to modulate a signal can be transmitted to a
enabling data rates in The
the research
order ofon hundreds of Gbps, in fully
by RF designed
for theself-interference-suppression
uplink. Nonetheless, VLC circuits could be[13]. used
proper receiver [11]. VLC is more mature
line with Practical
to introduce full-duplex
cellular deployments
coverage in indoorrequirescenarios,
innovations in
which,
than thattheonboldest 6G requirements.
Terahertz communications, On thealsoother
thanks side,
to
thea main antenna and circuit design to reduce the crosstalk
as mentioned in Sec. II, is a use case that has not been between
lower issues
cost ofthat prevented the
experimental adoption
platforms. Asofreported
Terahertz in
transmitter and receiver
properly addressed circuitsstandards.
by cellular in a wireless device,
links
Fig.in3,commercial
VLC have systems
limited so far are range,
coverage propagation
requireloss, an
thus they have not been included into current cellular
molecular
illumination absorption,
source, and high
sufferpenetration loss, from
from shot noise and engi-
other Although standardization bodies are promoting study items
network specifications. Future technology advancements,
neering challenges
light sources (e.g.,for
theantennas
sun), thus andcanRadio Frequency
be mostly used that are oriented towards the investigation of THz and VLC
however, will enable concurrent downlink and uplink
indoors
(RF) [11]. Moreover,
circuitry. they needthe
As for mmWaves, to be complemented
propagation loss solutions for future wirelessthesystems (i.e., capabilities
IEEE 802.15.3d
transmission, to increase multiplexing and
canbybeRF for the uplink.
compensated usingNonetheless, VLC could
directional antenna be used
arrays, also and 802.15.7,
the overall system throughput without usinghave
respectively), these technologies not yet
additional
to introduce
enabling cellular
spatial coverage with
multiplexing in indoor scenarios,
limited which,
interference. been bandwidth.
included in a cellular 6G network standard, and careful
will be
Nonetheless, networks will need
as mentionedTerahertz
Furthermore, in Sec. II, is a use case that
communication has not been
performance can targeting beyond 5G use cases. Moreover, additional research
planning for the full-duplex procedures and deployments,
beproperly
maximized addressed by cellular in
by operating standards.
frequency bands not is still required
to avoid to enableas6G
interference, mobile
well users
as novel to operate
resource in the
scheduler
severely affected
Although by molecular
standardization bodies absorption
are promoting [10],study
as shown
items THz designs
and VLC spectra,
[13]. including hardware and algorithms for
in Fig. 3. Finally, such high frequencies,
that are oriented towards the investigation of THz and when limited
VLC flexible multi-beam acquisition and tracking
• Novel channel estimation techniques (e.g., out-of- in Non-Line-of-
to indoor-to-indoor
solutions scenarios,
for future wireless enable
systems newIEEE
(i.e., kinds802.15.3d
of ultra- Sightband
(NLOS) environments.
estimation and compressed sensing). Channel
small-scale electronic packaging solutions for the RF and Besides the new spectrum, 6G will also transform wireless
 5

Increasing energy and

bandwidth

Increasing wavelength

Legacy Spectrum Millimeter Waves TeraHertz Visible Light

6 GHz 30 GHz 300 GHz 300 GHz 10 THz 430 THz 770 THz

20 dB Pathloss [dB] 140 dB 70 dB Pathloss [dB] 150 dB 0 dB Pathloss [dB] 150 dB Received
00 W0.002 0.004 0.006 Power
0.008 0.01 0.012 [W] 0.020.02W
0.014 0.016 0.018

Micro Macro Smart City LED1

Received Power [W]

200 102 LED2
120
Distance [m]

Distance [m]
Pathloss [dB]

100 10-2
80

8
6 8
20 4 6
10 10-5 4
100 500 1000 6 150 300 0.1 5 10 2 2
Distance [m] Frequency [GHz] Frequency [THz] Y Room [m] X Room [m]

Fig. 3: Pathloss for sub-6 GHz, mmWave and Terahertz bands, and received power for VLC. The sub-6 GHz and mmWave pathloss follows
the 3GPP models considering both Line-of-Sight (LOS) and NLOS conditions, while LOS-only is considered for Terahertz [10] and VLC [12].

networks by leveraging a set of technologies that have been sub-6 GHz signals to the channel estimation for mmWave
enabled by recent physical layer and circuits research, but are frequencies [14]. Similarly, given the sparsity in terms of
not part of 5G. The following will be key enablers for 6G: angular directions of mmWave and Terahertz channels, it
• Full-duplex communication stack. With full-duplex is possible to exploit compressive sensing to estimate the
communications, the transceivers will be capable of re- channel using a reduced number of samples.
ceiving a signal while also transmitting, thanks to care- • Sensing and network-based localization. The usage
fully designed self-interference-suppression circuits [13]. of RF signals to enable simultaneous localization and
Practical full-duplex deployments require innovations in mapping has been widely studied, but such capabilities
antenna and circuit design to reduce the crosstalk between have never been deeply integrated with the operations and
transmitter and receiver circuits in a wireless device, protocols of cellular networks. 6G networks will exploit a
thus they have not been included into current cellular unified interface for localization and communications to
network specifications. Future technology advancements, (i) improve control operations, which can rely on context
however, will enable concurrent downlink and uplink information to shape beamforming patterns, reduce inter-
transmission, to increase the multiplexing capabilities and ference, and predict handovers; and (ii) offer innovative
the overall system throughput without using additional user services, e.g., for vehicular and eHealth applications.
bandwidth. Nonetheless, 6G networks will need careful
planning for the full-duplex procedures and deployments, B. Innovative Network Architectures
to avoid interference, as well as novel resource scheduler The disruption brought by the communication technologies
designs [13]. described in Sec. III-A will enable a new 6G network architec-
• Novel channel estimation techniques (e.g., out-of- ture, but also potentially require structural updates with respect
band estimation and compressed sensing). Channel to current mobile network designs. For example, the density
estimation for directional communications will be a key and the high access data rate of Terahertz communications
component of communications at mmWaves and Ter- will increase the capacity demands on the underlying transport
ahertz frequencies. However, it is difficult to design network, which has to provide both more points of access
efficient procedures for directional communications, con- to fiber and a higher capacity than today’s backhaul net-
sidering multiple frequency bands and possibly a very works. Moreover, the wide range of different communication
large bandwidth. Therefore, 6G systems will need new technologies available will increase the heterogeneity of the
channel estimation techniques. For example, out-of-band network, which will need to be managed.
estimation (e.g., for the angular direction of arrival of The main architectural innovations that 6G will introduce
the signal) can improve the reactiveness of beam man- are described in Fig. 4. In this context, we envision the
agement, by mapping the omnidirectional propagation of introduction and/or deployment of the following paradigms:
 6

3D Network Architecture
Efficient and low-power network operations Connectivity to and from
Energy will be at the core of the design of 6G protocols non-terrestrial platforms

s
ng

ode
esti

n
ar v

wer
h

-po
rgy

Low
E ne

Disaggregated and virtualized RAN Extreme multi-connectivity

The networking equipment will not require dedicated hardware Exploit THz, VLC, mmWave and
sub-6 GHz links
Cloud Edge

Virtual Virtual Cell-less architecture

MAC PHY The UE connects to the RAN
Generic hardware and not to a single cell

Fig. 4: Architectural innovations introduced in 6G networks.

• Tight integration of multiple frequencies and com- and trajectory optimization, resource management and
munication technologies and cell-less architecture. 6G energy efficiency.
devices will support a number of heterogeneous radios in • Disaggregation and virtualization of the network-
the devices. This enables multi connectivity techniques ing equipment. Even though networks have recently
that can extend the current boundaries of cells, with started to transition towards the disaggregation of once-
users connected to the network as a whole (i.e., through monolithic networking equipments, the 3GPP does not
multiple complementary technologies) and not to a single directly specify how to introduce virtualization concepts.
cell. The cell-less network procedures will guarantee Moreover, current 5G studies have not yet addressed
a seamless mobility support, without overhead due to the challenges related to the design of disaggregated
handovers (which might be frequent when considering architectures that can operate under the higher control
systems at Terahertz frequencies), and will provide QoS latency that might be introduced by centralization, and to
guarantees that are in line with the most challenging the security of virtualized network functions, which could
mobility requirements envisioned for 6G, as in the ve- be subjected to cyber-attacks. 6G networks will bring
hicular scenarios. The devices will be able to seamlessly disaggregation to the extreme by virtualizing Medium
transition among different heterogeneous links (e.g., sub- Access Control (MAC) and Physical (PHY) layer compo-
6 GHz, mmWave, Terahertz or VLC) without manual nents which currently require dedicated hardware imple-
intervention or configuration. Finally, according to the mentations, and realizing low-cost distributed platforms
specific use case, the user may also concurrently use dif- with just the antennas and minimal processing. This will
ferent network interfaces to exploit their complementary decrease the cost of networking equipment, making a
characteristics, e.g., the sub-6 GHz layer for control, and massively dense deployment economically feasible.
a Terahertz link for the data plane. • Advanced access-backhaul integration. The massive
• 3D network architecture. 5G networks (and previous data rates of the new 6G access technologies will require
generations) have been designed to provide connectivity an adequate growth of the backhaul capacity. Moreover,
for an essentially bi-dimensional space, i.e., network Terahertz and VLC deployments will increase the density
access points are deployed to offer connectivity to devices of access points, which need backhaul connectivity to
on the ground. On the contrary, we envision future 6G their neighbors and the core network. The huge capac-
heterogeneous architectures to provide three-dimensional ity of 6G technologies can thus be exploited for self-
(3D) coverage, thereby complementing terrestrial infras- backhauling solutions, where the radios in the base sta-
tructures with non-terrestrial platforms (e.g., drones, bal- tions provide both access and backhaul. While a similar
loons, and satellites). Moreover, these elements could option is already being considered for 5G, the scale
also be quickly deployed to guarantee seamless service of 6G deployments will introduce new challenges and
continuity and reliability, e.g., in rural areas or during opportunities, e.g., as the networks will need higher
events, avoiding the operational and management costs of autonomous configuration capabilities.
always-on, fixed infrastructures. Despite such promising • Energy-harvesting strategies for low power con-
opportunities, there are various challenges to be solved sumption network operations. Incorporating energy-
before flying platforms can effectively be used in wireless harvesting mechanisms into 5G infrastructures currently
networks, e.g., air-to-ground channel modeling, topology faces several issues, including coexistence with the com-
 7

munications, and efficiency loss when converting har- artificial intelligence, to implement a fully-user-centric
vested signals to electric current. Given the scale expected network architecture. In this way, end terminals will be
in 6G networks, it is necessary to design systems where able to make autonomous network decisions based on the
both the circuitry and the communication stack are devel- outcomes of previous operations, without communication
oped with energy-awareness in mind. One option is using overhead to and from centralized controllers. Distributed
energy harvesting circuits to allow devices to be self- methods can process ML algorithms in real time, i.e.,
powered, which could be critical for example to enable with a sub-ms latency, as required by several 6G services,
off-grid operations, long-lasting IoT devices and sensors, thereby yielding more responsive network management.
or long stand-by intervals for devices and equipment
which are rarely used. IV. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we reviewed use cases and technologies
C. Integrating Intelligence in the Network that we believe will characterize 6G networks. Table I sum-
The complexity of 6G communication technologies and net- marizes the main challenges, potentials and use cases of
work deployments will probably prevent closed-form and/or each enabling technology. 6G wireless research can disrupt
manual optimizations. While intelligent techniques in cellular the traditional cellular networking paradigms that still exist
networks are already being discussed for 5G, we expect 6G in 5G, introducing for example the support for Terahertz
deployments to be much denser (i.e., in terms of number of and visible light spectra, cell-less and aerial architectures,
access points and users), more heterogeneous (in terms of and massive distributed intelligence, among others. These
integration of different technologies and application character- technologies, however, are not market-ready: this represents
istics), and with stricter performance requirements with respect a unique opportunity for the wireless research community to
to 5G. Therefore, intelligence will play a more prominent foster innovations that will enable unforeseen digital use cases
role in the network, going beyond the classification and for the society of 2030 and beyond.
prediction tasks which are being considered for 5G systems.
Notice that the standard may not specify the techniques and ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
learning strategies to be deployed in networks, but data- This work was partially supported by NIST through Award
driven approaches can be seen as tools that network vendors No. 70NANB17H166, by the U.S. ARO under Grant no.
and operators can use to meet the 6G requirements [15]. In W911NF1910232, by MIUR (Italian Ministry for Education
particular, 6G research will be oriented towards the following and Research) under the initiative ”Departments of Excel-
aspects: lence” (Law 232/2016), by NSF grants 1302336, 1564142,
• Learning techniques for data selection and feature and 1547332, the SRC and the industrial affiliates of NYU
extraction. The large volume of data generated by future WIRELESS.
connected devices (e.g., sensors in autonomous vehicles)
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Marco Giordani [M’20] was a Ph.D. student in Information Engineering at

the University of Padova, Italy (2016-2019), where he is now a postdoctoral
researcher and adjunct professor. He visited NYU and TOYOTA Infotechnol-
ogy Center, Inc., USA. In 2018 he received the “Daniel E. Noble Fellowship
Award” from the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. His research focuses
on protocol design for 5G mmWave cellular and vehicular networks.

Michele Polese [M’20] was a Ph.D. student in Information Engineering at the

University of Padova (2016-2019), where he is now a postdoctoral researcher
and adjunct professor. He visited NYU, AT&T Labs, and Northeastern Uni-
versity. His research focuses on protocols and architectures for 5G mmWave
networks.

Marco Mezzavilla [SM’19] is a research scientist at the NYU Tandon School

of Engineering. He received his Ph.D. (2013) in Information Engineering from
the University of Padova, Italy. His research focuses on design and validation
of communication protocols and applications of 4G/5G technologies.

Sundeep Rangan [F’15] is an ECE professor at NYU and Associate Director

of NYU WIRELESS. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California,
Berkeley. In 2000, he co-founded (with four others) Flarion Technologies, a
spinoff of Bell Labs that developed the first cellular OFDM data system. It
was acquired by Qualcomm in 2006, where he was a director of engineering
prior to joining NYU in 2010.

Michele Zorzi [F’07] is with the Information Engineering Department of the

University of Padova, focusing on wireless communications research. He was
Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Wireless Communications from 2003 to 2005, IEEE
Transactions on Communications from 2008 to 2011, and IEEE Transactions
on Cognitive Communications and Networking from 2014 to 2018. He served
ComSoc as a Member-at-Large of the Board of Governors from 2009 to 2011,
as Director of Education and Training from 2014 to 2015, and as Director of
Journals from 2020 to 2021.