6G: The Personal Tactile Internet—And Open Questions for Information Theory

Abstract

The initial vision of cellular communications was to deliver ubiquitous voice communications to anyone anywhere. In a simplified view, 1G delivered voice services for business customers, and only 2G for consumers. Next, this also initiated the appetite for cellular data, for which 3G was designed. However, Blackberry delivered business smartphones, and 4G made smartphones a consumer device. The promise of 5G is to start the Tactile Internet, to control real and virtual objects in real-time via cellular. However, the hype around 5G is, again, focusing on business customers, in particular in the context of campus networks. Consequently, 6G must provide an infrastructure to enable remote-controlled mobile robotic solutions for everyone-the Personal Tactile Internet. Which role can information and communication theory play in this context, and what are the big challenges ahead? PerspectiveFor over 100 years, mankind has been dreaming of personal mobile robotic helpers that make our everyday lives more comfortable. There are many examples: As a child: Someone who cleans up our room or is an additional interactive companion. As an adult: Someone who helps with our daily chores, is a friendly companion, and cleans our room or carries the shopping. As a senior: Someone who makes life at home possible and delays the move to assisted living space.This requires, based on innovations in electronics, a maturity in robotics technology that is foreseeable within the next ten years. However, the missing piece is the wireless networking infrastructure to enable sensing and orchestration of control functions. That is the challenge to be tackled by 6G. Building on the previous five generations of mobile communications, we currently are in the process of learning what is missing for this vision. From 2030 on, with the launch of 6G, the old dream of mankind of robotic helpers easing our life will therefore become reality-the Personal Tactile Internet.So far, every ten years a new generation of mobile communications has been introduced. Here is a highly simplified overview that provides an insight into the trend of the application innovations.

Editorial Opening of the 2022 TVLSI Editorial Year—Connecting Trends From Society to VLSI Systems

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“…It is expected, that information theoretical security will play an important roll in future communication systems. It is the very technique to achieve security by design, which is already a key requirement for 6G ( [10] and [11]). Furthermore, it is expected, that quantum communication and the use of quantum resources will be important for achieving the design goals of 6G ( [12]).…”

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“…Modern data systems have an ever-growing gap between the available information storage and the bit per second rates, which are limited by the noisy transmission medium [1,2]. Quantum communication is thus expected to enter the sixth generation of cellular networks (6G) in order to achieve performance gains [3][4][5].…”