6G is on the horizon, and AI is playing a crucial role in its development. Join Keysight as we explore the latest advancements, discuss AI-driven innovations, and break down what’s next for next-generation connectivity. Gain key insights into the progress shaping the future of wireless technology. Watch now in ‘Exploring 6G: AI Integration and Future Prospects with Keysight.
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Alejandro Pinero:
All right. Welcome back to Fierce Network's coverage of MWC Barcelona. I'm here in Keysight's booth and we're going to talk all 6G. Jessy, thanks for joining us. Great to see you here in Barcelona once again. Can you tell us perhaps what's coming up over the next 12 months in terms of 6G development?
Jessy Cavazos:
Sure. We'll see a lot of research around spectrum technologies and we're expecting a lot of research also for new technologies that are coming with 6G in two mobile networks. So around AI/ML, sensing, and also around all that is reconfigurable intelligence services as well. So all of these areas will be researched over the next year until we move forward to the Release 20 with some study items and so forth.
Alejandro Pinero:
So on that point, Jessy, in terms of Release 20 and onwards, what are some of those key milestones we should be looking forward to or keeping in mind as we move in that direction towards 6G?
Jessy Cavazos:
In a couple of weeks, actually, we're going to have some 3-GPT meetings. Out of those, we're going to know some of the study items. They will be finalized over somewhere in the summer, June, and then we'll move on to work items with Release 21. That's what we're looking at in terms of standards coming up for 6G.
Alejandro Pinero:
Great. And so moving on to specifically what goes into 6G, Balaji, could you talk to us a little bit about AI? I know it's the buzzword, everyone talks about it, but surely it has a growing and important role to play with 6G.
Balaji Raghothaman:
Certainly. I think AI, as you said, is not just a buzzword, but it's become a reality even in the 5G advanced timeframe right now. But 5G has AI more as an afterthought. For 6G, we really expect it to be integrated right from the beginning in a very native way. And so architectures may change in order to adopt AI in a more wholesome manner. And AI is, you can look at it as a super optimizer, if you will. Right now, 3-GPT, the standard, and the technology is built in layers and each layer we take a certain level of complexity and optimize it. And we do it just because of reasons of the level of optimization, the number of variables that are in the wireless overall radio access network, which is huge. But going forward with the power of AI and the power of the computing that it brings together, you can think of putting multiple layers together and optimizing them to much greater impact.
Right now, we are seeing very early stages of experimentation of AI in the physical layer. For example, we are showing a demo with Samsung Research and NVIDIA as part of the AI-RAN Alliance work to show the effect and the impact of channel estimation with AI on the performance of the up-link data. But there is a lot, lot more in the pipeline like CSI compression and beam management and positioning our current study items in 3-GPT. And may get some rudimentary specification in the late 5G, but really will mature in the 6G timeframe. And once you move beyond the physical layer and just the radio access network, there is so much to do all the way up and down the network in terms of optimizing traffic patterns, mobility, and almost anything that you can think of.
And one additional aspect I would say is that there is a new paradigm shift in thinking in terms of how to deploy base stations. People are thinking of them as data centers now and the possibility of sharing workload between the RAN network and just generic AI workload for any other application during the off-peak hours of the usage of the wireless network. So these open up new possibilities and we, Keysight, are involved in all of these areas. We have an AI workload modeling solution that we are also showing here at MWC, and it's going to be highly impactful in terms of optimizing the infrastructure of the data centers for the purpose of AI and RAN.
Alejandro Pinero:
To close, if I could ask you to give us the one key message or one thing that you really want our viewers and folks perhaps that you share with already, what's that one thing you want them to walk away? Shall we start with you first?
Balaji Raghothaman:
The impact of AI and the availability of an explosive amount of computing power will enable the physical world and the virtual world to come together in new ways. I think that will be the real impact of 6G.
Alejandro Pinero:
Excellent. And Jessy, how about you?
Jessy Cavazos:
Well, apart from that, I think 5G still needs to be monetized. So a lot of the technologies that are with 5G will evolve with 6G. So some of these technologies, like NTN for example, it's a good example of that. I think this is one of the key points that we'll see as we move from 5G to 6G, is that we'll take some of these technologies with us. It will be more than the new technologies that we're bringing in that I was mentioning earlier as well.
Alejandro Pinero:
Excellent. Well, thank you both for your time and have a great show.