Join Joaquin Torrecilla at MWC Barcelona as he dives into the exciting evolution of 6G! Explore the role of digital twins in shaping immersive communications, AI-driven networks, and the next-gen drone economy. Discover how these innovations will revolutionize the future.
Learn more about collaborating with Keysight on 6G.
Alejandro Piñero:
All right, Joaquin, thank you for having us here at Keysight's stand at MWC Barcelona. I'm very excited to speak a little bit more about 6G. So, let's talk about the evolution into 6G. What technologies do we have currently available that are going to build the path to the new standard?
Joaquin Torrecilla:
Okay, that's a good question. We need to probably think where we are in the 6G timeline. The standard is not there yet. The standard will not come until early 2029. And at this moment, we are moving from, let's say, early research phase, where companies, research organizations look at specific technologies that can make their way to 6G. And we are now moving to a more system-level view, where experiments move to looking at the whole system end-to-end, how it works, how all of these different technologies can fit into the overall system. And actually next week, there will be an important 3GPP meeting in Seoul, in Korea, where all the industry will be bringing their ideas for the new 6G standard. So, that will be like the starting point for the standardization process.
Alejandro Piñero:
Brilliant. And I know a big topic is digital twins, and how they'll play a role or how they'll enable 6G and vice versa. So, maybe could we start with a definition of digital twins for this purpose, and then how it will play a role with 6G?
Joaquin Torrecilla:
Okay. Yeah, no, that's a... A digital twin, let's say from a purist view, a digital twin, it's a virtual representation of the digital world that is connected real-time with how the real world evolves. It's like if you have probably seen all these videos where a person is put into a virtual world, and when they move, the virtual cartoon or whatever moves: it's the same. It's the same, but at a much more complex level, especially when you are emulating something like a mobile network.
Because in a mobile network, you have a physical environment that impacts how radio propagates, you have devices that move around that physical environment, you have different types of materials, and the radio signal reflects in different ways depending on the material itself, on the shape of the streets, whatever is there. And then you have all of the complexity of the 5G or in the future, the 6G system, all the base stations, the core network, all the protocols involved, the traffic, et cetera. So, in these digital twins, at the end of the day, you can have different levels of abstraction, different levels of complexity, depending on what you want to model. It's not like you can't have 100% replication of the real world.
Alejandro Piñero:
Sure. Yeah. And when it comes to 6G, I know you mentioned on the timeline we're working on those standards, you'll be at this meeting next week in Korea, but there are surely case studies or use cases live today that you could speak to or tell the audience about.
Joaquin Torrecilla:
Yeah, well, if we talk about use cases, I would say probably one of the most popular, and people talk about a lot, it's immersive communications. That's kind of multisensory communications where you can embed yourself into a virtual world, where the other participants can all collaborate together. So, that's probably one of the most talked about, especially for the consumer and for the day-to-day of people.
Then there are many other use cases more related to industrial and enterprise type of solutions. And one of the aspects being very much discussed is, for example, sensing: is the ability of the network to sense the environment and be able to detect what's around. Imagine the new drone economy, where drones will be around moving people, moving packages, whatever. If the network can track all of the drones in the air, then you have a map of what's happening in real life in real time, and you need that to be able to handle that big, complex system.
Alejandro Piñero:
Yeah. So, 6G and digital twins will come in to address that complexity. How optimistic are you that we'll come together as an industry and find the best way forward?
Joaquin Torrecilla:
Yeah, no, digital twins, it's a hot topic in 6G. Think about one specific topic that is really, really getting lots of hype today, that's AI. One of the expectations is that AI will manage the network, will optimize the network, will handle how the network is perceived by the customers. You can't think that an operator will not deploy an AI model in the network without really, really thorough testing. And digital twins play a big role there, because you are having a copy of the network in real time, then you have your AI looking at what's happening there, thinking, "How can I improve this?" And then it improves it in the digital twin. Look at how, why it behaves, and then eventually can decide to implement that in the real network. But if you do that in the real network and you do something wrong or crazy, then you have millions of customers really, really upset.
Alejandro Piñero:
Absolutely. Well, no pressure there. Joaquin, thank you so much for having us here in what I'm sure is a very busy week at MWC. It's always fascinating to hear all about what's going on with 6G, and look forward to seeing your hard work come to life.
Joaquin Torrecilla:
Yeah, thanks for coming.