What is Information Theory's Role in 6G?
Few technologies have been as transformative as quickly as the mobile Internet, characterized by the global 4G and 5G cellular networks, as well as pervasive WiFi. Few engineering disciplines have benefited as much from strong theoretical underpinnings as has the wireless communications field, whose origins in and continuing partnership with information theory have enabled this crowning human achievement of global real-time connectivity. As we approach 2030 and the 6G era, not to mention the 80th anniversary of Shannon's 1948 thunderbolt, wireless systems are becoming ever more complex as well as indispensable to a large variety of human endeavors. Some consider wireless to be an increasingly mature and established technology field, without many unresolved and pressing theoretical questions. Are they right?
Related Articles
Timely and Massive Communication in 6G: Pragmatics, Learning, and Inference
5G has expanded the traditional focus of wireless systems to embrace two new connectivity types: ultra-reliable low latency and massive communication. The te...
An Updated Research Vision of the Next Generation Network After Several Years on the 6G Journey
Significant progress has been made since the research community explicitly started defining a vision for 6th generation network (6G). The goal of the this ar...
Exploiting the Depth and Angular Domains for Massive Near-Field Spatial Multiplexing
In this article, we present our vision for how extremely large aperture arrays, equipped with hundreds or thousands of antennas, can play a major role in fut...