Future technologies for an intelligent society
Digital infrastructure plays a critical role in our society, with communication technologies helping to address social, environmental, and economic challenges across the globe. Mobile networks, the backbone of this digital infrastructure, constantly evolve. Our research aims to ensure that the resilient, open, sustainable and intelligent 5G network platform of today continues to evolve towards the 6G era.
The future intelligent network platform will include capabilities beyond connectivity and meet new needs of multi-sensory, immersive communication, communicating intelligent machines, and large-scale digital twins.
Networks will need to become ‘cognitive’ – capable of learning and adapting, making decisions, and solving problems themselves. Reliability, availability, resilience, security, and privacy – technical abilities inherent in networks today – will be extended with new technologies and capabilities to keep systems secure when the use of mobile networks expands. Complex and real-time processing will be distributed and tightly integrated throughout the network.
Our research agenda comprises a set of technology journeys towards 2030 and the 6G era. These technology journeys outline our view of technology evolution in the coming years and guide our research activities.
Four of these technology journeys emphasize use case needs, exploring the demanding requirements future use cases will place on the network platform, and suggesting new capabilities they will need. The other four capture the evolution of the intelligent network platform itself.
The 2030 vision is also our 6G vision. 2030 is the timeframe when we see 6G emerging as the future intelligent network platform.
Ericsson is a key driver of openness in mobile networks. We have seen the value of openness through all mobile generations, creating a global ecosystem of players able to focus on different parts and interconnect through standardized interfaces and enabling end-users and devices to connect anywhere in the world. Building the future 6G vision on these same principles is fundamental to delivering limitless connectivity.