The "2022 Global 6G Development Conference" sponsored by the IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group and the China Communications Society was held grandly. The Vice President, Chief Engineer and Director of the Expert Committee of China Information and Communication Technology Group Co., Ltd., Director of the State Key Laboratory for Wireless Mobile Communications, and IEEE Fellow Dr. Chen Shanzhi were invited to deliver a wonderful report, "Two Signs of 6G and Its Core Technology Engine", which thoroughly analyzed the two signs of 6G, the key drivers to realize the vision of 6G, and the core technology engine of 6G and its research direction, and called on the industry to continue to innovate together.

Two signs of 6G

One of the 6G signs

Satellite-ground integrated mobile communication to achieve 6G global coverage

In order to overcome the wide-area and spatial coverage problems of traditional terrestrial mobile communication, satellite-ground integration has been widely recognized as an important technical development direction of the future 6G network, and has become a hot research direction in the current academic and industrial circles. In the field of 6G satellite-ground integrated mobile communications, Dr. Chen Shanzhi and his China Information Technology team have conducted extensive and in-depth research, which is leading. For example, in the "Analysis of Low Earth Orbit Satellite Communication and Suggestions for China's Development" published by Dr. Chen Shanzhi in the "Telecommunications Science" in June 2020, regarding the technical path and industrial path selection problems faced by China in accelerating the development of low Earth orbit satellite communication, and how to give full play to China's commercial aerospace The unique and profound thinking of the comprehensive advantages of the 5G mobile communication and integrated circuit industry and the practical and strategic proposal of "compatibility with 5G and integration with 6G" have been highly recognized by the industry.

The China Information Technology Team has deeply studied the technical indicators of the 6G satellite-ground integrated communication system, the technical challenges in designing the system and other key issues, and also proposed a series of key technologies that can meet the relevant requirements and solve the relevant challenges, including the key technologies of satellite-ground integrated wireless, integrated networking technology and function expansion.

6G sign II

User-centric flexible customizable network architecture to meet the challenges of 6G demand

User-centered is the original intention of mobile communication. Dr. Chen Shanzhi proposed a user-centered wireless network architecture with distributed and service-oriented features. Multiple access points dynamically serve users on demand to achieve "user-centered". The network architecture is expected to become a subversive architecture in the 6G era, and will become one of the key drivers for the realization of 6G.

In addition, Dr. Chen Shanzhi and his team proposed a user-centered ultra-dense network (UDNN) architecture several years ago, and proposed new methods for mobile management, resource management, interference control, and security control. Relevant achievements were published in the top publication IEEE Wireless Communication in April 2016, "User Centric Ultra-Dense Networks (UUDN) for 5G: Challenges, Methodologies and Directions", which continued to generate high value effects. By November 15, 2022, Google Academic has been cited as many as 340 times and was rated as "ESI Highly Cited Papers" (the top 1% of the papers).

Six core technology engines of 6G

Technology engine 1

Super-dimensional antenna to improve 6G spectrum interest rate and system capacity

In recent years, some new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent hypersurface (RIS) have created new conditions for the further development of multi-antenna technology. Dr. Chen Shanzhi pointed out that the research direction includes the theory and method of high frequency spectral efficiency super-dimensional beamspace multiplexing, super-dimensional (antenna dimension, holographic dimension, functional dimension, energy consumption dimension) antenna, intelligent hypersurface (RIS), large-scale antenna, beamspace multiplexing and other organic combination.

Technology engine 2

New multi-access access to meet the challenges of massive access and satellite-ground integration

For 6G, it is urgent to introduce new multi-access access technology to truly fully realize the digital society through Internet of Things/Zhilian. Non-orthogonal multiple access technologies such as pattern division multiple access (PDMA) technology proposed by China Information Technology in the early years are expected to expand to multiple scenarios. Dr. Chen Shanzhi pointed out that on the basis of PDMA research, the random access process and data transmission process can be integrated into one process and jointly optimized to form a non-coordinated random access and transmission technology (URAT).

Technology engine 3

Integration of communication and knowledge, supporting 6G to realize iLink

With the deepening of the research on the integration of communication perception technology, synaesthesia integration is expected to become one of the key technologies in the 6G standard. Dr. Chen Shanzhi pointed out that as an emerging technology in the 6G stage, the research direction of synaesthesia integration still has problems to be solved at various levels, such as theory, application, network, air port, integrated hardware, etc., especially the application scenario and architecture of synaesthesia integration; Environmental awareness and auxiliary communication technology; Synaesthesia fusion signal technology (waveform, interference, etc.); Collaboration and sharing of software and hardware resources of synaesthesia; Multi-station collaborative sensing, end-to-end collaborative sensing and other research directions.

Technology engine 4

New coding, flexible solution to different requirements of 6G signaling and diversified services

Coding and modulation is one of the most important functional modules in the 6G communication system. In the future, there will be a large number of communication between machines and AI agents in 6G. Dr. Chen Shanzhi analyzed four research directions: one is to support short code with ultra-low delay and ultra-high reliability, the other is to support low-complexity coding with extremely high throughput, the third is AI-assisted channel coding and decoding design, and the fourth is source-channel joint coding.

Technology engine 5

Wireless intelligence and intelligent network to meet the challenges of 6G intelligence and complex operation and maintenance

6G will transform from centralized cloud-based intelligence to distributed network intelligence (AI atomic capability), processing from core to edge, and improve user experience. Dr. Chen Shanzhi analyzed and pointed out that the research direction includes AI-based network intelligence technology, network intelligence management and scheduling technology, especially wireless intelligence technology - from separation (replacing some modules of wireless communication system with AI) to joint/system (constructing end-to-end wireless communication system based on AI) evolution.

Technology engine 6

Intelligent spectrum sensing and sharing to solve the contradiction between resource scarcity and low utilization

For the increasingly tense spectrum resources, intelligent spectrum sensing and flexible spectrum sharing are one of the most effective means to improve the shortage of spectrum resources. AI helps to establish a dynamic and accurate spectrum cognitive database. In addition, for the 6G satellite-ground fusion system, spectrum sharing can greatly improve the spectrum utilization of satellite communication and ground communication. At the same time, with the assistance of AI, the terminal can better distinguish the satellite communication signal and the ground communication signal according to the signal direction, so as to achieve space reuse and interference avoidance.

Cooperation and innovation, running to 6G

Recently, China Information Technology has successfully realized the experiment of replacing the traditional phased array antenna with intelligent hypersurface on large-scale antenna beam shaping to achieve high-speed data transmission. For the first time in the world, the application of RIS as a base station transmitter antenna array and the technical experiment of millimeter wave handheld terminal access have been realized. The system realizes multi-stream data transmission in the field test of the IMT-2030 (6G) propulsion group in the indoor environment, and the downlink data rate of the single user of the handheld terminal can reach more than 5Gbps. This verification result preliminarily shows the great potential of smart hypersurface technology in supporting multi-antenna dimension expansion and transmission capacity improvement in future mobile communication systems.

Dr. Chen Shanzhi and his Chinese information technology team have made important achievements in the research and exploration of 6G, which have been widely concerned and highly recognized, such as the "Vision, Requirements, and Technology Trend of 6G - How to Tackle the Challenges of System Coverage Capacity, User Data-rate and Movement Speed" published by IEEE Wireless Communication, a top publication in the communication field with an impact factor of 12.777, in April 2020, As of November 15, 2022, Google Academic has been cited as many as 294 times, and "ESI highly cited papers" (the top 1% papers).

The team of China ICT/State Key Laboratory of Wireless Mobile Communications has made a series of major breakthroughs in 5G evolution and 6G technology routes and key technologies, especially in core key technologies such as large-scale beam space multiplexing and satellite ground integration mobile communications.

Based on the long-term technology accumulation and standard system construction capability of mobile communication, China Information Technology Corporation (SINC) has led the development of many standards in CCSA, 3GPP, ITU and other standard organizations. It is an important contributor to 5G satellite communication, a leader of China's 5G satellite Internet system, and will also make an important contribution to the 6G satellite-ground integration.

China Information Technology Co., Ltd. actively arranged 6G research, and actively carried out research on 6G vision and demand, research and verification of 6G key technologies in cooperation with the industry, so as to prepare for the follow-up 6G standardization work. "We expect that with the joint efforts of the industry, 6G will make in-depth progress and potential breakthroughs," said Dr. Chen Shanzhi.