Next G Alliance's Report on 6G Applications and Use Cases

The Next G Alliance by ATIS is an initiative to advance North American mobile technology leadership over the next decade through private sector-led efforts. With a strong emphasis on technology commercialization, their work encompasses the full lifecycle of research and development, manufacturing, standardization and market readiness. 

Back in February, they announced the publication of the Roadmap to 6G. The report presented the first 6G vision for North America and described major steps that industry, government and academia should take to ensure North American wireless leadership for the next decade and beyond. You can download the report here. Telecom TV has a good summary of that announcement here.

In May/June Next G Alliance published 6G Applications and Use Cases report, available here. The summary of that is as follows:

The Next G Alliance is identifying the drivers of the future applications that have the potential to influence development of next-generation mobile communication technologies. It does this by gathering applicable information, reviewing trends, and assessing the evolution of applications and use cases. Main drivers are classified into the Next G Alliance’s four foundational areas of use cases (Everyday Living, Experience, Critical Roles, and Societal Goals), with the goal of better understanding how next-generation technology and its ecosystem can help improve the way humans live and interact.

Complementing the audacious goals the Next G Alliance has set, the Next G Alliance Report: 6G Applications and Use Cases includes four categories of use cases: Network-Enabled Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Multisensory Extended Reality, Distributed Sensing and Communications, and Personalized User Experiences. The report also includes high-level functional and performance requirements based on both audacious (new and challenging) and obvious (slightly enhanced) characteristics developed by the Applications Working Group.

By taking a proactive view of 6G applications and their potential, the Next G Alliance is developing the North American perspective on what is required to fuel the success of a host of applications yet to be imagined. The goal is to foster innovation so that emerging applications can help drive evolution of the 6G network.

The following is an extract from the summary section at the end:

6G applications are expected to foster North American market growth and improve the quality of life for consumers. Enhancements are expected to expand human interaction with devices, from voice assistants to service robots, and systems to provide enriched immersive VR/AR/MR experiences. It is expected that more than 60% of current smartphone users will have lightweight XR glasses by the time 6G is commercially deployed. These lightweight devices will be capable of generating a massive amount of traffic and will require low latency. It is expected that the use of robots will drastically expand from manufacturing to health care, logistics, elderly care, and social companions. These robots will have mobility and natural language capabilities. They will require accurate localization and mapping for seamless mobility, as well as access to data centers for natural language processing. The support of XR devices at scale and robotics at scale must be a fundamental part of the 6G design and architecture.

6G applications are also expected to improve productivity, quality, time-to-market, and cost-effectiveness for enterprises. The Applications Working Group has classified the 6G use cases into the following four categories: 

  • Network-Enabled Robotics and Autonomous Systems
  • Multi-Sensory XR
  • Distributed Sensing and Communications
  • Personalized User Experiences

Although every use case can be different, each category of use cases has its own general set of characteristics. The 6G characteristics have been categorized in the following manner:

  • Performance
  • Localization and Sensing
  • Connectivity
  • Communication
  • Services
  • Terminal/Device

The following Next G Alliance Working Groups can benefit from this report:

Technology Working Group

  • 6G National Roadmap Working Group
  • Societal and Economic Needs Working Group
  • Green G Working Group
  • Spectrum Working Group

The following external organizations can benefit from this report:

  • Research Organizations
  • Communications Service Providers
  • Hyperscale Cloud Providers
  • Enterprises

You can download the report from here.

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