Officially launched at Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona 2024 today, the AI-RAN Alliance is an organization aimed at revitalizing the convergence of AI and wireless communication and leading technology innovation through cooperation with related companies. A total of eleven organizations — including Samsung, Arm, Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, NVIDIA, SoftBank and Northeastern University — are participating as founding members. This new alliance will collaborate on the development of innovative new technologies, as well as the application of these technologies to commercial products in preparation for the upcoming 6G era.

“Emerging services in the 6G era will revolutionize the way people interact with technology, and AI will be an integral part of this trend,” said Charlie Zhang, Senior Vice President at Samsung Research America. “The AI-RAN Alliance will foster collaboration, drive innovation and usher in a new era of transformation around AI and 6G networks. We believe this coalition will create new value for end users and operators through AI-based use cases and innovations.”

The AI-RAN Alliance aims to combine AI and wireless communication technologies for application in various fields, create an ecosystem, and ultimately expand opportunities for new businesses. To this end, it has established three working groups that carry out technical research: AI for RAN, AI and RAN, and AI on RAN. AI for RAN will focus on technology utilizing AI/ML² to improve spectrum, cost and energy efficiency of RAN. AI and RAN will focus on AI and radio network convergence technology for both efficient resource management and maximizing infrastructure utilization. AI on RAN will focus on discovering new AI applications and services in wireless networks. The results of these activities — such as technical reports and white papers — are expected to greatly contribute to the standardization and commercialization of 6G in the future. This includes the discovery of new services, technical requirements and specifications.

Samsung is planning to use this alliance activity to lead technological convergence and service innovation that combines AI with wireless communication technology. The company is also committed to leading the 6G ecosystem with its industry-leading position in AI and wireless communication solutions, such as semiconductors, AI hardware and software technologies, wireless communication systems and terminals.

Samsung Research initially spearheaded the development of 6G technologies by establishing the Advanced Communications Research Center (ACRC) in May 2019. Since that time, Samsung Research has established itself as an early leader of 6G research through the publication of the 6G white paper and the 6G spectrum white paper in July 2020 and May 2022, respectively. In May 2022, Samsung hosted the inaugural Samsung 6G Forum, demonstrating its leadership in next-generation communication research and development.

Samsung Research has been continuously evolving its 6G technology strategies to adapt to the changing telecom industry landscape. In particular, as related to the AI-RAN Alliance, Samsung Research envisions AI-Native to be a key attribute of future 6G networks. Samsung Research believes with AI being a natural part of the 6G system functionality, the future network will have significantly improved capacity and coverage, and become fully automated and highly energy-efficient. Going forward, Samsung Research will continue to lead innovations with the goal of the successful launch and commercialization of next-generation communication systems in the future.

For more information about the AI-RAN Alliance, please visit https://ai-ran.org/.

¹ AI-RAN stands for Artificial Intelligence-Radio Access Network.
² AI/ML stands for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Both sessions at the Forum featured talks from experts across academia and industry who specialize in next-generation communications technologies, and featured topics covering the present state and ambitious future of 6G.

Read on for Samsung Newsroom’s recap of the Forum and the areas of research that took center stage at the first-ever Samsung 6G Forum.

Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research, gives the opening speech at Samsung 6G Forum.

Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research,¹ opened up the Forum by sharing Samsung’s vision for the next-generation of communications technologies. “We envision that 6G will provide the ultimate in experiences through the next level of hyper-connectivity, and this idea serves as the foundation of our 6G vision,” noted Seung. “We believe that it is the right time to start preparing for 6G. Shaping 6G will require many years, as we have seen with previous generations, and will need lots of discussion and collaboration among players in industry as well as academia.”

Setting the tone for the rest of the day, Seung went on to express his confidence in 6G’s potential to become a fundamental technology that drives a convergence of services between industries and will be ultra-wideband, ultra-low latency, ultra-intelligent and hyperspatial, as well as opening up whole new realm of connectivity.

6G Air Interface: Relentless Innovation of Wireless Technologies and United Efforts To Secure New Spectrum Opportunities

Jeffrey Andrews, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, delivers his keynote for the morning session of Samsung 6G Forum.

Opening up the morning session of the 6G Forum, Jeffrey Andrews, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, delivered a keynote speech titled ‘Deep Learning in the 6G Air Interface’. This keynote saw Andrews focus on the role of machine learning in next-generation communication, including how 6G communication can improve the performance of air interface through deep learning as well as how more deeply-penetrated machine learning might be expected to transcend the current limits of 5G technologies. “In order to successfully apply machine learning to 6G as well as 5G, it is of course necessary for us to understand both wireless communications and machine learning fundamentals,” emphasized Professor Andrews. “It is essential for us to work together in order to make progress on this topic and do novel work.”

The keynote speech was followed by a series of in-depth expert talks, the first of which was given by Charlie Zhang, Senior Vice President (SVP) at Samsung Research America and titled ‘Radio Technology Evolution for Beyond 5G and 6G’. SVP Zhang introduced the R&D progress for the possible wireless technologies of 6G communication and presented two new 6G spectrum opportunities that are currently being investigated: an upper mid-band of 7-24 GHz and an enormous sub-terahertz band of 92-300 GHz. “Both options provide us with a very good opportunity to find enough capacity for all these exciting 6G services,” noted SVP Zhang. He then also detailed how sub-terahertz band has been tested in the field by his team as well as introduced advanced duplex technology called XDD for coverage enhancement and innovations in distributed MIMO. He concluded with an enthusiastic reiteration of the value of cooperation, emphasizing the need for collaboration between institutions, companies and countries necessary to bring about future innovations.

Takehiro Nakamura, SVP and General Manager at NTT DOCOMO, delivers an online talk titled ‘5G Evolution and 6G’.

The second expert talk was given by Takehiro Nakamura, SVP and General Manager at NTT DOCOMO under the title of ‘5G Evolution and 6G’. As well as discussing the global growth seen recently into 5G and 6G research, SVP Nakamura expressed his opinions on performance improvement in the case of Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) technology being applied in 5G and 6G communications. “6G networks can perform as human nerves,” detailed SVP Nakamura regarding the potential of IOWN technologies applied for 6G. “They can augment and extend human capabilities. If we can share body movement, the five senses and emotions through 6G networks, we can realize very interesting and exciting new services which were described as science fiction.”

John Smee, SVP of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., presents his talk at Samsung 6G Forum.

The third expert talk of the morning session was conducted by John Smee, SVP of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., on the topic of ‘Driving Air Interface Innovation Toward 6G’. SVP Smee carefully detailed how technological innovations will pave the path to a 6G world. “When we take a step back and imagine the world in 2030, it’s really about understanding changing the physical world and many different types of devices that we will have connected,” he explained. SVP Smee highlighted six key research vectors in particular: artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML)-powered E2E communications, spectrum expansion and sharing, new radio designs, communications resiliency, scalable network architecture and the merging of worlds.

Juho Lee, Fellow at Samsung Research, leads a panel discussion around 6G RAN technology.

Following the presentations, Juho Lee, Fellow at Samsung Research, led a panel discussion on 6G RAN technology. The seven key themes addressed by the panel were the strengths of 6G over 5G, the killer applications for 6G, the relationship between 5G-Advanced and 6G, the performance requirements for 6G wireless technologies, the spectrum for 6G, wireless technologies for 6G and the potential of AI for air interfaces. “Securing new spectrum is one of the most important elements for research and development of the 6G air interface technology,” noted Lee. “Without the new spectrum, it will be difficult to build a next-generation system.”

Sunghyun Choi, Executive Vice President (EVP) and Head of Advanced Communications Research Center at Samsung Research shares Samsung’s latest 6G research results.

The morning session was then concluded by Sunghyun Choi, Executive Vice President (EVP) and Head of Advanced Communications Research Center at Samsung Research, who shared the most recent results of Samsung’s research into key 6G candidate technologies along with demonstration videos.

Intelligent Network for 6G: Native AI Support for Next-Generation Communications

The afternoon session commenced with a keynote speech from Tarik Taleb, Professor at University of Oulu, Finland, under the title of ‘6G Networking — The Journey Towards a Novel Vision of “Service of Services”’. In his keynote, Professor Taleb advocated for the use of AI, network function, virtualization, software-defined networking and edge/cloud computing in order to reduce expenditure and operational costs, and proposed that 6G should be viewed as a new service concept beyond next-generation communications. “I would like to share the view of this journey which I think is going to lead us to another vision of 6G as being a service of services, rather than what is known as 6G being a network of networks.”

Following the keynote, Seungjoo Maeng, Master at Samsung Electronics, gave a talk on ‘Challenges in Applying AI/ML Technology to Improve Performance of Mobile Communication Systems’. In his talk, Master Maeng highlighted some of the challenges that might arise when AI/ML technologies are applied to 6G, and went on to propose some potential solutions. Master Maeng also concluded that collaboration among experts is the key to solve the issues of applying AI/ML technologies to 6G: “Experts should work closely together to develop meaningful and efficient technologies,” he said. “Working together is the key for successful technology development.”

The next talk was given by Byonghyo Shim, Professor at Seoul National University, under the theme of ‘Deep Learning-Aided Mobile Detection and Beamforming for mmWave and THz Communications’. The talk presented a new paradigm for mmWave and THz communications based on deep learning (DL). “Down the road we’ll have more emerging applications, like AR, VR, XR and metaverse, to name just a few and they require further increase of data rate,” noted Professor Shim. “Deep learning would contribute for improving the performance of beamforming that is the essential technology for high frequency band used to increase the data rate when it comes to supporting emerging applications.”

The final talk of the day was given by Shi Jin, Professor at Southeast University, China. In his talk, titled ‘Deep Learning-based CSI Feedback in Massive MIMO Systems’, Professor Jin highlighted the challenges inherent to applying AI/ML technologies to massive MIMO systems as well as the ways that could solve them. “In the past 10 years, deep learning has achieved great success in many areas,” noted Professor Jin. “Inspired by this success, deep learning has been introduced in wireless communications and our work — deep learning-based CSI feedback — has become a popular topic in 6G research.”

Following the afternoon sessions’ talks, EVP Choi led a panel discussion on network AI that saw the Forum’s experts share their opinions on the way AI technologies are being investigated actively in 6G research and development. The participants also shared their thoughts on the research direction for AI in 6G on the topics of native AI, cost issues, interoperability, standardization of technologies for support of AI and reliable AI.

Tarik Taleb, Professor at University of Oulu, Finland, takes part in the Samsung 6G Forum’s afternoon panel discussion.

The panel discussion also saw the participants deal with the challenges surrounding the commercialization of 6G, their predictions for the future of AI/ML technologies in 6G and, more generally, what needs to be prepared for realizing 6G. “We need to define all the KPIs, accuracy and reliability of AI models in order to get into standardization of the technologies required for support of AI,” noted Professor Taleb, who also emphasized the need for digital twins and simulators for the benchmarking of AI models. Professor Shim also advocated for the importance of collaboration in this process, noting that: “in order to standardize the technologies required for truly using AI in 6G, cooperation based on consensus across companies is key.”

At the inaugural Samsung 6G Forum, the thoughts and experiences that were shared by experts around the current status and future of 6G provided a glimpse into the future of 6G that Samsung, along with industry experts, academics and partners, is working hard to realize. Stay tuned to Samsung Newsroom for all the latest news on the next generation of communications technologies.

Key Takeaways From the Samsung 6G Forum’s Speakers

¹ Samsung Research, acting as Samsung Electronics’ advanced R&D hub, leads the development of future technologies for the company’s Device eXperience (DX) Division.

Samsung Electronics announced that the company hosts its first-ever Samsung 6G Forum (S6GF) online today.

Under the theme of ‘The Next Hyper-Connected Experience for All.’, the forum is divided into two sessions and broadcasts live online via Samsung’s YouTube channel. Each session consists of talks by experts from academia and industry specializing in next-generation communications technologies, followed by a panel discussion.

“We envision that 6G will provide ultimate experiences for humans and everything through the next level of hyper-connectivity, and this idea serves as the foundation of our 6G vision,” said Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research.¹ “We believe that it is the right time to start preparing for 6G. Shaping 6G will require many years, as we have seen with previous generations, and will need lots of discussion and collaborations among players in industry and academia.”

Morning Session — 6G Air Interface 

The morning session is held under the theme, ‘6G Air Interface’. In this session, Jeffrey Andrews, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin gives a keynote speech, titled ‘Deep Learning in the 6G Air Interface’, highlighting that deep learning (DL) will be a key technology enabling 6G, which can provide important advances at many layers of the air interface.

Following the keynote speech, Charlie Zhang, Senior Vice President (SVP) at Samsung Research America, Takehiro Nakamura, SVP and General Manager at NTT DOCOMO and John Smee, SVP of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. give in-depth expert talks.

SVP Charlie Zhang of Samsung Research America makes a presentation on ‘Radio Technology Evolution for Beyond 5G and 6G’. He presents that while 6G technologies are still in their early days, a few emerging directions are taking shape and gaining momentum in academia and industry alike, including the support of a new spectrum such as upper mid-band in the range of 7-24 GHz and Terahertz (THz) band, novel antenna technologies, the evolution of duplex technology and network topology, spectrum sharing, Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a native part of the protocol design, etc.

SVP Takehiro Nakamura of NTT DOCOMO talks on ‘5G Evolution and 6G’, highlighting the research focused on technologies and services for 5G evolution and 6G is accelerating throughout the world. SVP John Smee of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. talks about ‘Driving Air Interface Innovation Toward 6G’, emphasizing the advanced wireless research and development along multiple vectors that will bring disruptive innovations and push technology boundaries to enable new and enhanced user experiences with 6G.

Following the presentations, Juho Lee, Fellow at Samsung Research, leads a panel discussion on 6G RAN technology. Afterward, Sunghyun Choi, Executive Vice President (EVP) and Head of Advanced Communications Research Center at Samsung Research, shares Samsung’s progress in 6G research along with demo videos.

Afternoon Session — Intelligent Network for 6G

The afternoon session goes under the theme, ‘Intelligent Network for 6G’. Tarik Taleb, Professor at University of Oulu, Finland, starts off with a keynote speech regarding ‘6G Networking — The Journey Towards a Novel Vision of “Service of Services”’. He highlights that AI, Network Function Virtualization, Software-Defined Networking and Edge/Cloud computing brought significant benefits in terms of reducing expenditure and operational costs, flexibility in deployment and faster time to market, and mentions that 6G will likely enable a new breeze of cloud-native mobile networking.

Following the keynote speech, Seungjoo Maeng, Master at Samsung Electronics, Byonghyo Shim, Professor at Seoul National University and Shi Jin, Professor at Southeast University, China deliver in-depth expert talks.

Master Seungjoo Maeng of Samsung Electronics talks about ‘Challenges in Applying AI/ML Technology to Improve Performance of Mobile Communication Systems’, highlighting the challenges in applying AI and ML (Machine Learning) to improve the performance of wireless mobile communication systems and how to solve them.

Professor Byonghyo Shim of Seoul National University gives a talk on ‘Deep Learning-Aided Mobile Detection and Beamforming for mmWave and THz Communications’, presenting the new paradigm to control mmWave and THz communications based on DL. Professor Shi Jin of Southeast University, China introduces ‘Deep Learning-based CSI Feedback in Massive MIMO Systems’, discussing challenges and potential research directions associated with implementing DL-based CSI (channel state information) feedback in future wireless communication systems.

After these presentations, EVP Sunghyun Choi of Samsung Research leads a panel discussion on network AI.

For more information on ‘Samsung Tech Forum’, please visit Samsung Research website at research.samsung.com.

¹ Samsung Research, acting as Samsung Electronics’ advanced R&D hub, leads the development of future technologies for the company’s DX (Device eXperience) Division.

As anticipation and competition ramp up around the development of 6G technology, Samsung Electronics is set to hold its first-ever Samsung 6G Forum on May 13. Under the theme of ‘The Next Hyper-Connected Experience for All.’, leading global experts from academia and industry in the area of next-generation communications technologies will be discussing the future of those technologies that are set to drive significant changes.

In order to introduce some of the technologies being prepared by Samsung ahead of the upcoming Forum, Samsung Newsroom undertook a virtual roundtable with Samsung Research’s¹ leading experts in the field. Sunghyun Choi, Executive Vice President and Head of the Advanced Communications Research Center at Samsung Research, and Charlie Zhang, Senior Vice President at Samsung Research America, came together virtually to share some of their most recent research and breakthroughs within the 6G communications technologies, as well as what they anticipate the future of the field will look like. The virtual roundtable was moderated by Jaebum Park, researcher at Samsung Research’s 6G Research Team.

Read on to learn more about the groundbreaking work Samsung Research has been undertaking in order to prepare for the next generation of communications technologies.

Jaebum Park Welcome and thank you to both of you for joining this online roundtable. Firstly, as are all well aware, the competition surrounding the development of 6G technologies has steadily been increasing. After accomplishing the world’s first commercialization of 5G, Samsung is now working hard at its research and development (R&D) into 6G. Why is this 6G R&D so important?

Sunghyun Choi 6G is the next-generation communications technology that will bring huge changes to every aspect of our lives, as well as to various industries. It requires prolonged effort and investment to bring about. Samsung is striving to lead 6G R&D and standardization, with the goal of bringing next-level, hyper-connected experiences to our customers.

Park In July 2020, Samsung released a white paper entitled “The Next Hyper-Connected Experience for All.” which outlined the company’s vision for 6G. Can you tell us more about the technologies Samsung currently is working on to realize this vision?

Choi 6G is expected to be characterized by ultra-wideband, ultra-low latency, ultra-intelligence and hyper-spatialization. Unlike communications technologies of previous generations, 6G is expected to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) technology. To this end, Samsung is developing a range of innovative solutions; an AI based technology that reduces power consumption at base stations, and a technology that utilizes AI at the receiver to compensate the signal distortion caused by the nonlinearity of a transmitter’s power amplifier and hence, can significantly improve the coverage and quality of high-rate data signals were both recently developed, for example. We have also seen growing demand for greater coverage.

In response to these requirements, Samsung proposes considering all available bands for 6G, from low-band under 1 gigahertz (GHz) to mid-band in the 1-24 GHz range and through to high-band in the 24-300 GHz range. We also need to consider the existing bands used for 3G, 4G and 5G networks. Higher bands tend to have a shorter transmission distance. In order to mitigate this issue, Samsung has developed solutions such as Cross Division Duplex (XDD) technology, whose standardization process is already underway, and is also pursuing the development of technologies such as Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS), which improves beam sharpness and can steer or reflect the wireless signal to a desired direction by use of a metamaterial surface.

The Samsung Research Advanced Communications Research Center in fact recently published a white paper, entitled “6G Spectrum: Expanding the Frontier” which includes ways to obtain the spectrum needed to achieve the company’s 6G vision. We are also closely working with leading global experts from academia and industry in the area of next-generation communications technologies.

Park The white paper lays out the company’s vision for securing global frequency bands for 6G. I have heard that Samsung Research America, along with Samsung Research and researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), recently managed to successfully demonstrate wireless communications in the terahertz (THz) band which is one of the candidate bands for 6G.

Charlie Zhang The THz spectrum covers from 100 GHz to 10 THz. Our team was responsible for building a proof-of-concept (PoC) prototype system able to demonstrate the potential of the THz spectrum, including related distance, data rate, RF (Radio Frequency) and baseband system capacity.

In collaboration with Professor Mark Rodwell’s research team at UCSB and the Samsung Research team based in Korea, in 2021, we succeeded in demonstrating 6G THz wireless communication with phased-array beamforming capability.

Even though we still have a long way to go to improve the performance, this achievement of phased-array beamforming at a long distance is an important milestone for THz research as it demonstrated the clear potential of the THz spectrum for future cellular communication.

Park The commercial launch of 6G is not expected to occur soon. However, the competition surrounding the development of 6G technologies has steadily been increasing. What would you characterize as Samsung’s unique advantages when it comes to developing these next-generation technologies?

Choi Samsung is a company that offers a wide variety of products, ranging from smartphones and base stations to chipsets – something that it is not at all common in the industry. Furthermore, in April 2019, Samsung was among the first to realize the commercialization of 5G. Samsung also has a strong track record of having led technology standardization with its partners for many years at the telecommunications standards organization that develops unified global standards for mobile telecommunications, the 3^rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

Zhang In order to accelerate the development process of the next generation telecommunications system to the point where it can become a commercial reality, development and utilization of various technologies are key, and at Samsung Research, we are very happy to see that many partners are joining us in these efforts. Samsung Research was one of the first research institutes in the world to publish a 6G vision white paper. Following on from our previous collaborations, we will continue, along with various partners, to identify key solutions in order to successfully commercialize 6G technology.

Park I understand that the standardization of 6G technology is expected to begin around 2025. Could you please introduce the standardization process and the work that needs to be done to successfully achieve 6G standardization?

Choi The future of communications technology will be defined by its ability to bring the next hyper-connected experience to all. Communications technologies enable human-to-human, human-to-machine and machine-to-machine connections. To connect different devices or machines, we need the same standard of communications across the board, and the process to set this standard is called ‘standardization.’ To standardize the communications technologies, the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R), an agency of the United Nations, first defines the technical requirements, which is then followed by the work of organizations such as 3GPP to establish technical standards according to these requirements. The standard for a new generation of communications technology is developed through the process of submitting proposals and reaching the consensus among constituting members.

While it is essential to develop outstanding technologies, it is also important to form a consensus on 6G technologies in the standardization process. As part of this effort, Samsung is holding its first-ever Samsung 6G Forum on May 13, which will see leading experts from all over the world in the mobile communications field gather to discuss 6G.

Park Can you please elaborate more on what we can expect from Samsung’s first-ever 6G Forum?

Choi The upcoming Samsung 6G Forum will be a sphere within which the world’s top experts in the field can set the tone for the future of 6G. We are set to have presentations and panel discussions on the topic of 6G air interface in the morning, and will then hold presentations and panel discussions about AI-based intelligent networks for 6G in the afternoon. Anyone interested in 6G technologies is able to participate in the Forum through online pre-registration.

Zhang At the 6G Forum, Samsung will be demonstrating some of the 6G candidate technologies that it has been developing over the past three years, as well as the company’s vision for future technology development. Although there is still a long road ahead of us before we achieve 6G commercialization, I believe that the hyper-connected experiences across all areas of life that 6G is set to bring us will become a reality sooner rather than later by bringing together industry, academia and research experts regularly through the opportunities like Samsung 6G Forum.

Park These days, the term ‘6G’ is a commonly known one. The general gist of what the 6G era will bring includes communications speed increases and mobile-based virtual reality experiences, changes that will totally transform users’ daily lives. I am curious what you, as two leaders in 6G research and development, have to say about what the biggest changes are set to be for this era?

Choi From my perspective, the era of 6G is set to connect as many as 500 billion devices, resulting in the vehicles, appliances and even the buildings around us being connected to this super-fast communications network.

Samsung Research defines the biggest changes in three ways: firstly, services such as truly-immersive extended reality (XR), high-fidelity mobile holograms and digital replicas will be possible. Secondly, the performance of telecommunications networks is set to improve greatly thanks to the implementation of AI technologies. Finally, the connected experience offered to users will be available anytime and anywhere, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and from the ground to the sky.

Zhang Even now, limited XR devices and services such as VR and AR exist and digital replication technology is already being harnessed in industrial IoT. However, the limitations of hardware devices and communications performance mean that the utilization of these technologies is not high. In a world where 6G technology is universal, those truly-immersive XR and high-fidelity mobile holograms, as once seen only in science fiction movies, will become possible. Furthermore, by bringing together the virtual and real worlds, it will become possible to safely and easily address problems encountered in the real world.

Park What are your thoughts on the future direction of and your goals for 6G technology research?

Zhang At Samsung Research America, we will focus on undertaking research into how to successfully commercialize 6G technology along with our partners. Along with our research into THz, we are planning to continue our research to improve high-capacity data transmission and latency and to simplify future network deployment. Research collaboration with industry and academia will continue to accelerate the realization of the 6G vision of providing next-generation hyper-connected experiences across all areas of life.

Choi The process of preparing for 6G commercialization that Samsung is working on is set to be a long and painstaking one, requiring a lot of hard work. This cannot be achieved by Samsung alone, and will require the collaboration of industries, academics and governments alike. We at Samsung intend to play a leading role in leading both innovation and collaboration.

Park I’d like to thank you both for your time today. Do you have any closing remarks you would like to share?

Zhang It has been an honor to speak with you today and introduce the efforts and vision of Samsung Research for 6G. While there are many challenges ahead, I agree with Dr. Choi that by continuing innovation and collaboration, we can definitely achieve the goal of bringing the next hyper-connected experience to every corner of life via 6G.

Choi The first step in moving towards our joint goal of realizing 6G will be taken at the Samsung 6G Forum, and we look forward to the interest and participation of many at the event.

If you are interested in pre-registering online to take part in the Samsung 6G Forum on May 13, you may do so by visiting the event website until the day of the event. As well as receiving event schedule updates, registered guests will also be able to leave questions on the website prior to each session.

The Samsung 6G Forum, divided into two sessions, will be broadcast live online via Samsung’s YouTube channel. Be sure to tune in on May 13 to learn more about the future of the hyper-connected experience, and stay tuned to Samsung Newsroom for all the latest news about 6G.

¹ Samsung Research, Samsung Electronics’ advanced R&D hub, leads the development of future technologies for the company’s Device eXperience (DX) Division.

“We have started on our journey long ago to understand, develop and standardize the 6G communications technology,” said Sunghyun Choi, Executive Vice President and Head of the Advanced Communications Research Center at Samsung Research.² “We are committed to taking the lead and sharing our findings to spread our vision to bring the next hyper-connected experience to every corner of life.”

6G Spectrum: Expanding the Frontier

6G would require spectrum with ultra-wideband contiguous bandwidth ranging from hundreds of MHz to tens of GHz to enable new services such as high-fidelity mobile holograms and truly immersive extended reality (XR) that are characterized by ultra-high speed communications and large amount of data. There is also growing demand for greater coverage. In response to these requirements, Samsung proposes considering all available bands for 6G, from low-band under 1 GHz, to mid-band in the 1-24 GHz range and high-band in the 24-300 GHz range.

It also highlights the importance of securing new bands for commercial deployments of 6G, as 5G networks will still be operational when the 6G deployment starts. The mid-band within the 7-24 GHz range is a candidate that can support faster data speed and reasonable coverage. The sub-terahertz (sub-THz) band in the 92–300 GHz range is being considered for support of ultra-high speed data rate. The white paper also mentions the refarming of existing bands used for 3G, 4G and 5G networks to 6G operation as another way to obtain all the spectrum necessary for 6G. In addition, it notes that research on forward-looking regulations and technologies on spectrum utilization is essential to provide efficient and flexible support of 6G and other services with the limited spectrum.

Recent Findings on 6G Candidate Technologies

Along with the release of the 6G spectrum white paper, Samsung also highlights its research findings on some of 6G candidate technologies – specifically about sub-THz band communications, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), cross division duplex (XDD), full duplex, artificial intelligence (AI)-based nonlinearity compensation (AI-NC) and AI-based energy saving (AI-ES).

Sub-THz is considered a spectrum candidate for 6G communications, which is expected to support the data rate up to 1 Terabits per second (Tbps), 50 times faster than 20 Gbps of 5G networks. Samsung successfully demonstrated 6 Gbps data rate at a 15 meters distance indoors in June 2021, and 12 Gbps at a 30 meters distance indoors and 2.3 Gbps at a 120 meters distance outdoors the following year.

RIS can improve the beam sharpness and can steer or reflect the wireless signal to a desired direction with the use of a metamaterial surface. It can reduce the penetration loss and blockage of high frequency signal, e.g., mmWave. Samsung demonstrated that their RIS lens technology can enhance the signal strength by four times and the beam steering range by 1.5 times.

XDD can improve the propagation distance of uplink signal up to two times in the TDD system by enabling the continuous uplink transmission in a small portion of the system bandwidth. Hence, XDD is capable of dramatically enhancing the coverage of the TDD system often used in high-frequency bands. Samsung demonstrated its core technology, self-interference cancellation at the base station.

With full duplex, the data transmission and reception can take place simultaneously using the same frequency so that the data speed increases up to two times. Samsung carried out a successful trial of the full duplex in the mmWave band with a base station and a terminal 100 meters apart, demonstrating the self-interference cancellation of over 114 dB and 1.9 times improvement in the data rate.

AI-NC utilizes AI at the receiver to compensate the signal distortion caused by the nonlinearity of a transmitter’s power amplifier and hence, can significantly improve the coverage and quality of high-rate data signals. Samsung demonstrated 1.9 times improvement of the coverage for high-speed uplink data and 1.5 times improvement of the transmission speed for a given coverage.

AI-ES capitalizes on AI to minimize energy consumption at the base station by adjusting the parameters controlling the power on/off of selected cells depending on traffic load, without affecting network performance. In a real data-based replicated simulation of base stations, Samsung applied AI-ES to demonstrate an energy saving of more than 10%.

Samsung plans to share more details and the findings of its 6G research at the company’s first Samsung 6G Forum (samsung6gforum.com) scheduled on May 13, 2022.

For more information on ‘Samsung Tech Forum’, please visit Samsung Research website at research.samsung.com/events.

¹ Samsung’s 6G spectrum white paper is available for download at research.samsung.com.

² Samsung Electronics’ advanced R&D hub, which leads the development of future technologies for its Device eXperience division

Under the theme of ‘The Next Hyper-Connected Experience for All.’, the Samsung 6G Forum will bring together leading global experts from academia and industry in the area of next-generation communications technologies to discuss in-depth about future of the technologies that will drive significant changes across the board by 2030.

The forum will be divided into two sessions and broadcast live online via Samsung’s YouTube channel. Each session will consist of talks by the participating experts, followed by a panel discussion.

Anyone interested in the forum is encouraged to visit the event website (https://Samsung6gForum.com) to register online from April 13 to May 13. Email notifications will be sent out for event schedule updates, and registered participants may leave questions on the website prior to each session.

“We are excited to host our first forum solely dedicated to sharing knowledge and insights on the 6G technology and to spreading our vision,” said Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research. “In addition to the Samsung AI Forum and the Samsung Security Tech Forum we hold every year as ‘Samsung Tech Forum’, this new Samsung 6G Forum will further strengthen our position within the field. We look forward to discussing related key topics with colleagues, experts, and anyone interested in the next-generation communications technology.”

Samsung Research, acting as Samsung Electronics’ advanced R&D hub, leads the development of future technologies for the company’s DX (Device eXperience) Division.

Samsung 6G Forum Schedule

Morning Session – 6G Air Interface (09:00am-12:10pm KST)

The morning session will begin with opening remarks by Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research. In-depth expert talks, under the theme ‘6G Air Interface,’ will be delivered by Jeffrey Andrews, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin; Charlie Zhang, Senior Vice President at Samsung Research America; Takehiro Nakamura, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the 6G Laboratories at NTT DOCOMO; and John Smee, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. A panel discussion led by Juho Lee, Fellow at Samsung Research, will follow afterward.

Afternoon Session – Intelligent Network for 6G (1:10pm-4:20 PM KST)

The afternoon session, under the theme ‘Intelligent Network for 6G,’ will invite Tarik Taleb, Professor at University of Oulu, Finland; SeungJoo Maeng, Master at Networks Business, Samsung Electronics; Byonghyo Shim, Professor at Seoul National University; and Shi Jin, Professor at Southeast University, China to give talks on Intelligent Network for 6G. This compelling talk session will be followed by a panel discussion led by Sunghyun Choi, Executive Vice President and Head of the Advanced Communications Research Center at Samsung Research.

For more information on ‘Samsung Tech Forum,’ please visit Samsung Research website at https://research.samsung.com/events.