Feature: Industry 4.0
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Connecting everything! By Rohde & Schwarz technology experts At autonomy level 5, which is
ven though 5G networks are expected to grow and develop for many years to come, technology strategists are already presenting visions that
look far beyond 5G. If their 6G scenarios become reality, we can expect a rich communications landscape in the 2030s. Today, the LTE standard (4G) meets
the needs of most mobile network users. Download speeds of up to several hundred megabits per second make it easy to stream high-resolution videos or download large files within seconds. Enter 5G: already available countrywide, its speed is much greater, but does not bring any further benefits to users. However, a lot more is expected of 6G, with a planned rollout by 2030. 6G will be suitable for large-scale implementations, such as autonomous driving. Vehicles require extremely high data rates to exchange sensor information and download detailed traffic plans. 5G is clearly a big step forward, but with a maximum data rate of 20Gbps and signal latency of a millisecond, it is not good enough for true autonomous driving.
still a long way off, vehicles will not be as autonomous as the name suggests. After all, vehicles share roads, traffic lights and other infrastructure with countless other road users. For everything to run smoothly, autonomous vehicles must be connected in three ways: with each other, roadside facilities and a traffic control centre. Since many situations are safety-critical, such as emergency braking, high transmission speeds and reliable signal transfer are vital. Completely autonomous vehicles
will only be possible with 6G, which will reduce signal latency by a factor of ten and increase data throughput by a factor of fifty; see Table 1. The same is true for telemedicine,
especially surgery. Surgeons can already perform remote operations with a 5G data link; in some cases, patients and surgeons might be on different continents. But complicated operations can test the limits of 5G (visual detail and signal latency) and implementing 5G-Advanced in 2024 will not improve this.
14 September 2023
www.electronicsworld.co.uk
Machine focus In industrial settings, efficient machine- to-machine communications (M2M) will require the functionalities of 6G. Today, Industry 4.0, URLLC and
mMTC (Figure 1) all use 5G, but as needs become more complex, so will the requirements for better communications – instead of single type of M2M communications, many different types will be needed. Just look at a connected factory where highly-reliable radio links with end-to-end signal transit times in the low millisecond range are needed. Smart cities or smart homes have
completely different requirements. A smart home needs utility meters, sensors and control elements for everyday items such as waste bins or appliances to remotely provide information or automate processes. These applications only require sporadic radio communications with small amounts of data. The radio network for a smart city must connect hundreds or even thousands of identical end-point devices, many of them battery powered. Such applications were inconceivable when mobile communications were first
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