6G Framework 2023
With the evolution of information and communications technologies, IMT-2030 is expected to support enriched and potential immersive experience, enhanced ubiquitous coverage, and enable new forms of collaboration. Furthermore, IMT-2030 is envisaged to support expanded and new usage scenarios compared to those of IMT-2020, while providing enhanced and new capabilities.The objective of this ITU-R M.2160-2023 is to provide guidelines on the framework and overall objectives of the future development of IMT-2030. The next stage of the ITU-R process will be the refinement and formal description of IMT-2030 and beyond.
Unified global standards foster global collaboration, enable seamless connectivity, and drive economies of scale. Today, wireless mobile technology has become a fundamental platform for the digital transformation of everything. While we experience the benefits of unified global 5G standards in their worldwide rollout, a unified global 6G standard is expected to pave the way for an intelligently connected future with transformative applications and services.With joint efforts from all over the world, ITU-R WP 5D successfully drafted the new Recommendation for IMT-2030 (6G), which was finalized at the 44th meeting in Geneva on 22nd June 2023. This is a fundamental milestone in the development of 6G. At the 43rd meeting of WP 5D in February 2023, according to the plan, the status of the 6G Framework should have been promoted from a working document to a preliminary draft new Recommendation (PDNR). t the 41st meeting in June 2022, WP 5D agreed on the timeline for finalizing standardization of the IMT-2030 radio interface technology by June 2030. Following the completion of 6G Framework, WP 5D will now begin to define the technical performance requirements of 6G technology by February 2026. Submission of candidate radio interface technologies from 3GPP and others including ITU member countries is scheduled over the time window from 2027 to 2028 and they will be evaluated for compliance with the technical performance requirements. It is planned that technologies that pass the evaluation will be finally approved in June 2030.ITU-R WP 5D, the responsible group of standardizing international mobile telecommunication (IMT), agreed on the official name of the 6th generation mobile communication (6G) as IMT-2030, which is expected to be commercialized around 2030 onwards. IMT-2030 aims to provide immersive experiences, hyper-connections, and hyper low latency services by further improving the service and performance when compared with what is available with existing IMT-2020 (5G). It is also expected to provide new services distinct from 5G through ‘integration of communication and artificial intelligence (AI)’ and ‘integration of communication and sensing’.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has published the framework for the development of standards and radio interface technologies for the sixth generation of mobile systems, popularly referred to as 6G.The details of the 6G framework are contained in Recommendation ITU-R M.2160 on the "IMT-2030 Framework" approved by the ITU Radiocommunication Assembly (RA-23) at its recent meeting in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (01 December 2023).ITU's Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) will now focus on defining technical requirements, the submission process, and the evaluation criteria for potential 6G radio interface technologies. The ITU-R Recommendation represents significant progress in the development and implementation of globally accepted standards for mobile systems using 6G. All the previous mobile telecommunication generations - analogue cellular (1G), digital cellular (2G), IMT ‑ 2000 (3G), IMT‑ Advanced (4G), and IMT ‑ 2020 (5G) - were also standardized through ITU. For the next phase of 6G development, companies and industry associations will submit proposals for the IMT-2030 Radio Interface Technology (RIT) for ITU-R consideration in early 2027. These submissions will then be evaluated against the agreed minimum requirements prepared by ITU's expert group on IMT systems (ITU-R Working Party 5D), with the prospect of getting a final set of 6G technology standards approved by 2030.
The IMT-2030 Framework Recommendation identifies 15 capabilities for 6G technology. Nine of those capabilities are derived from existing 5G systems. IMT-2030 is also expected to help address the need for increased environmental, social and economic sustainability, and also support the goals of the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Expected usage scenarios for 6G include:
In addition, three new usage scenarios related to ubiquitous connectivity, AI, and integrated sensing are included:
The IMT-2030 Framework Recommendation identifies 15 capabilities for 6G technology. Nine of those capabilities are derived from existing 5G systems. IMT-2030 is also expected to help address the need for increased environmental, social and economic sustainability, and also support the goals of the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Expected usage scenarios for 6G include:
- Immersive communication to provide a rich and interactive video experience for users.
- Hyper-reliable and low-latency communication to enable the scale-up of intelligent industrial applications including telemedicine and management of energy and power grids.
- Enhanced ubiquitous connectivity, especially in rural, remote and sparsely populated areas with the aim of bridging the digital divide.
- Massive communication to include expanded use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and applications in smart cities, intelligent transport systems and sectors such as health, agriculture, energy and environmental monitoring.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) and communications to support AI-powered applications.
- Integrated multi-dimensional sensing to improve assisted navigation, and high-precision positioning including object and presence detection, localization, imaging and mapping.
In addition, three new usage scenarios related to ubiquitous connectivity, AI, and integrated sensing are included:
- Ubiquitous connectivity is intended to bridge the digital divide through interworking with other systems – including satellites, high-altitude-platforms, broadcast, and RLANs (Wi-Fi) – and to maintain a consistent user experience between different locations by integration of indoor and local networks.
- Artificial Intelligence and Communication is expected to facilitate distributed computing and AI applications. This is anticipated to encompass a range of new capabilities, such as data acquisition, preparation and processing from different sources, distributed AI model training, model sharing, distributed inference, and computing resource orchestration.
- ISAC is a new capability to provide high-precision positioning and localisation of devices and objects in the proximity of a sensor, where both UEs and base stations offer sensing capabilities. Opportunities include activity and gesture recognition, movement detection, localisation and tracking, environment monitoring and material inspection.
ITU-R WP-5D shared the draft new recommendation Framework and overall objectives of future development of IMT for 2030 and beyond (IMT-2030) finalised in June-23 ITU-R WP5D meeting (which has since been adopted in September-23 meeting) with 3GPP (in LS RP-231518). As per the timeline in the draft recommendations, ITU-R is seeking technical proposals for IMT-2030 with self-evaluations in 2029 to be adopted into IMT-2030 standard in 2030. This resulted in proposals from many members about starting 6G planning. Although there are small differences between proposals from different members, common points in most of the proposals regarding 6G planning are
- 6G workshop towards end of Release-19 (Mid-2024)
- Release-20 to include Study Items for 6G
- Release-21 to include Work Items for 6G (i.e. first 6G release)
- Release-21 (First 6G release) to be ready in 2029 for submission for IMT-2030 with self-evaluation.
6G FrameworkStarting with the FPLMTS (Future Public Land Mobile Telecommunication System) and the related study question for 3G (IMT-2000) research in 1985, the ITU has been standardizing radio interface technology for each generation since then by presenting its visions for both 4G (IMT-Advanced) and 5G (IMT-2020). The Vision Recommendations for 4G and 5G defined in ITU-R are as follows:
In early 2021, ITU-R WP 5D formally launched the study of the new Recommendation ITU-R M. [IMT Framework for 2030 and Beyond], which is commonly known as the 6G Vision. A full-day workshop on "IMT for 2030 and beyond" was held on 14th June 2022, with a total of 348 participants attending in-person as well as online3. Fourteen presentations were made by various ITU-R members, external organizations, research projects, and academia, demonstrating strong interests and visions toward IMT-2030 (6G). After two years and four months of continuous discussion and a total of 156 worldwide contributions, the draft of the new Recommendation for IMT-2030 (6G) was completed on schedule and finalized on 22nd June 2023 at the 44th ITU-R WP 5D meeting in Geneva, before the upcoming WRC-23 in November 20234. It is worth noting that the attention and the number of contributions to the 6G Vision discussion continued to increase and reached their maximum in the June 2022 meeting. Delegates of Administrations, regulators, operators, vendors, and research platforms from Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Africa, and Oceania all shared their views and contributed to the final consolidated Recommendation.
- 4G Vision Recommendation: Recommendation ITU-R M.1645 (June 2003) “Framework and overall objectives of the future development of IMT-2000 and systems beyond IMT-2000”
- 5G Vision Recommendation: Recommendation ITU-R M.2083 (September 2015) “IMT Vision - Framework and overall objectives of the future development of IMT for 2020 and beyond”
- Similarly, in the case of 6G, standardization continued under the term ‘Vision’, but the term ‘Vision’ was decided to be replaced with ‘Framework’ at the 43rd meeting of WP 5D held in February 2023 in response to objections from some member countries that did not prefer the word ‘Vision’. However, the term ‘Vision’ would continue to be widely used in many places around the world and within the industry.
In early 2021, ITU-R WP 5D formally launched the study of the new Recommendation ITU-R M. [IMT Framework for 2030 and Beyond], which is commonly known as the 6G Vision. A full-day workshop on "IMT for 2030 and beyond" was held on 14th June 2022, with a total of 348 participants attending in-person as well as online3. Fourteen presentations were made by various ITU-R members, external organizations, research projects, and academia, demonstrating strong interests and visions toward IMT-2030 (6G). After two years and four months of continuous discussion and a total of 156 worldwide contributions, the draft of the new Recommendation for IMT-2030 (6G) was completed on schedule and finalized on 22nd June 2023 at the 44th ITU-R WP 5D meeting in Geneva, before the upcoming WRC-23 in November 20234. It is worth noting that the attention and the number of contributions to the 6G Vision discussion continued to increase and reached their maximum in the June 2022 meeting. Delegates of Administrations, regulators, operators, vendors, and research platforms from Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Africa, and Oceania all shared their views and contributed to the final consolidated Recommendation.
User and application trendsIt is expected that a variety of new use cases would be enabled by 6G. By grouping the tens of different anticipated use case candidates together, 9 representative user and applications trends are addressed as follows:
Based on the 9 user and application trends addressed above, the Framework Recommendation presents 6 usage scenarios of IMT-2030 as follows. Figure depicts 6 usage scenarios and 4 overarching aspects in a wheel-shaped diagram.Six major usage scenarios are defined for IMT-2030 (6G), as illustrated in figure by the hexagon, extending from the triangle featuring IMT-2020. On the circle around the hexagon are the four overarching aspects, i.e. sustainability, ubiquitous intelligence, security/privacy/resilience, and connecting the unconnected, that act as essential design principles applicable to all usage scenarios.
As described above, 6G is envisaged to pursue an ongoing evolution of three representative usage scenarios of 5G (i.e., eMBB, URLLC, and mMTC) through a continuous development of these three traditional mobile communication areas. In addition, it is expected that 6G would not only enhance performance of communication itself but also extend its utilization to a wide variety of directions by integrating sensing/AI with communication.Furthermore, 6G is expected to be built on common characteristics, so-called ‘Overarching aspects’, which act as design principles commonly applicable to all usage scenarios. The overarching aspects include, but are not limited to, sustainability, security/privacy/resilience, connecting the unconnected, and ubiquitous intelligence. Initially, those items were proposed as candidates for usage scenarios, but eventually defined as overarching aspects as they could be considered important factors for all usage scenarios rather than showing an exclusive characteristic.
- 1) Ubiquitous intelligence
- 2) Ubiquitous computing
- 3) Immersive multimedia and multi-sensory interactions
- 4) Digital twin and virtual world
- 5) Smart industrial applications
- 6) Digital health and well-being
- 7) Ubiquitous connectivity
- 8) Integration of sensing and communication
- 9) Sustainability
Based on the 9 user and application trends addressed above, the Framework Recommendation presents 6 usage scenarios of IMT-2030 as follows. Figure depicts 6 usage scenarios and 4 overarching aspects in a wheel-shaped diagram.Six major usage scenarios are defined for IMT-2030 (6G), as illustrated in figure by the hexagon, extending from the triangle featuring IMT-2020. On the circle around the hexagon are the four overarching aspects, i.e. sustainability, ubiquitous intelligence, security/privacy/resilience, and connecting the unconnected, that act as essential design principles applicable to all usage scenarios.
- 1) Immersive communication: This usage scenario extends eMBB of IMT-2020 and covers use cases which provide a rich and interactive video (immersive) experience to users, including the interactions with machine interfaces.
- 2) Hyper reliable and low-latency communication: This usage scenario extends the URLLC of IMT-2020 and covers specialized use cases that are expected to have more stringent requirements on reliability and latency.
- 3) Massive communication: This usage scenario extends mMTC of IMT-2020 and involves connection of massive number of devices or sensors for a wide range of use cases and applications.
- 4) Ubiquitous connectivity: This usage scenario is intended to enhance connectivity with the aim to bridge the digital divide.
- 5) Integrated AI and communication: This usage scenario would support distributed compute and AI-powered applications by leveraging data collection, local or distributed compute offload, and the distributed training and inference of AI models across various intelligent nodes, such as base stations and devices in IMT-2030.
- 6) Integrated sensing and communication: This usage scenario facilitates new applications and services that require sensing capabilities, which makes use of IMT-2030 to offer wide area multi-dimensional sensing that provides spatial information about unconnected objects as well as connected devices and their movements and surroundings.
As described above, 6G is envisaged to pursue an ongoing evolution of three representative usage scenarios of 5G (i.e., eMBB, URLLC, and mMTC) through a continuous development of these three traditional mobile communication areas. In addition, it is expected that 6G would not only enhance performance of communication itself but also extend its utilization to a wide variety of directions by integrating sensing/AI with communication.Furthermore, 6G is expected to be built on common characteristics, so-called ‘Overarching aspects’, which act as design principles commonly applicable to all usage scenarios. The overarching aspects include, but are not limited to, sustainability, security/privacy/resilience, connecting the unconnected, and ubiquitous intelligence. Initially, those items were proposed as candidates for usage scenarios, but eventually defined as overarching aspects as they could be considered important factors for all usage scenarios rather than showing an exclusive characteristic.
- Extended usage scenarios for communication enhancement. As shown in the figure, three of them are further enhancements of the IMT-2020 (5G) usage scenarios (eMBB, mMTC, URLLC), i.e. Immersive Communication, Massive Communication, and Hyper Reliable and Low-Latency Communication, enhancing capabilities such as data rate, area traffic capacity, connection density, latency, and reliability. Typical use cases of these scenarios are summarized in Table.
- New usage scenarios for coverage extension. Ubiquitous Connectivity, as one of the three new usage scenarios, is still an enhanced communication scenario but features a wide range of coverage and mobility. In addition to the coverage extension technologies for terrestrial radio networking, the new architectures and business models to support interworking between TN (Terrestrial Networks) and NTN (Non-Terrestrial Networks) will be introduced. With this new usage scenario, it is expected to extend the current broadband and Internet-of-things (IoT) services into rural, remote, and sparsely populated areas, connecting the unconnected areas at an affordable cost.
- New usage scenarios for service extension. Integrated Sensing and Communication and Integrated AI and Communication are two new scenarios that have been included in the IMT Framework Recommendation to provide services beyond communications. New capabilities such as sensing accuracy, resolution, and detection probability, as well as AI-related distributed training and inference capabilities, are defined to evaluate the radio networks for new services and applications. Integrating the new capabilities of sensing and AI with enhanced communication, the 6G network will serve as a distributed neural system that will help fuse the physical, biological, and cyber worlds, making real-time digital twins a reality. It is expected to boost innovation and productivity, enhance living standards, and lay a solid foundation for Intelligence of Everything in the future.
CapabilitiesIn order to fulfil the six usage scenarios of IMT-2030, various technical aspects and performance requirements need to be considered. The 6G Framework Recommendation defines these technical objectives and requirements items as ‘Capabilities’, and the derived estimated target value ranges of each item for enhancing research and investigation of 6G as shown in the table below. Based on these target values, a detailed value (i.e., a single value) within the range would be developed in the technical performance requirements (TPR) phase beginning year 2024.
Figure summarizes the different dimensions of capabilities for IMT-2030, including 9 enhanced capabilities (peak data rate, user experienced data rate, spectrum efficiency, area traffic capacity, connection density, mobility, latency, reliability, and security/privacy/resilience) and 6 new capabilities (coverage, positioning, sensing-related capabilities, AI-related capabilities, sustainability, and interoperability). The range of values for the capabilities in the figure are estimated targets for research and investigation of IMT-2030. For each usage scenario, single or multiple values within the range would be developed in the future in other ITU-R Recommendations/Reports.
Spectrum demandThe recommendation mentions that multiple frequency ranges will be needed to meet the capacity and coverage requirements of IMT systems and to serve emerging services and applications. IMT-2030 envisages the use of a wide range of frequency bands ranging from sub-1 GHz up to sub-THz bands (low bands, mid bands (centimeterWave), mmWave bands and sub-THz bands). It expects that wider channel bandwidths may be needed to support future applications and services for IMT-2030 in a wide variety of deployments, including wide-area deployments. It is important to ensure that the current spectrum and newly assigned spectrum are harmonized.
To commercialize 6G around 2030, technology development and standard development should all be performed in a timely manner. At the same time, provisioning of true 6G services can be accomplished by securing necessary spectrum in WRC-27 since WRC occurs every four years. In order to determine 6G spectrum in WRC-27, it is the prerequisite to include candidate spectrum bands as agenda items of WRC-27 at the forthcoming WRC-23 taking place in November-December 2023. We will continue to work hard in collaboration with all the stake holders to secure necessary 6G spectrum.
To commercialize 6G around 2030, technology development and standard development should all be performed in a timely manner. At the same time, provisioning of true 6G services can be accomplished by securing necessary spectrum in WRC-27 since WRC occurs every four years. In order to determine 6G spectrum in WRC-27, it is the prerequisite to include candidate spectrum bands as agenda items of WRC-27 at the forthcoming WRC-23 taking place in November-December 2023. We will continue to work hard in collaboration with all the stake holders to secure necessary 6G spectrum.
Future technology trends for IMT-2030 (6G)In February 2020, ITU-R Working Party (WP) 5D finalized the work plan for a report on Future Technology Trends (FTT), aiming to provide a broad view of future technical aspects of terrestrial IMT systems for the timeframe up to 2030 and beyond. The report was completed in June 2022 and published in November 2022 (M.2516) with 59 contributions from all over the world2. The report elaborates on technology enablers for enhancing radio interface and radio access networks, as well as emerging technology trends for enabling new functions and services.Newly emerging technology trends for the development of IMT-2030 (6G) include technologies such as native artificial intelligence (AI) — which refers to both AI-enabled air interface design and radio network for AI services, integrated sensing and communication, sub-Tera Hertz (THz) transmission, extreme MIMO and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), enhanced trustworthiness with distributed ledger and quantum technology, as well as the interconnection between terrestrial networks (TN) and non-terrestrial networks (NTN).Table highlights the technology trends adopted in the report M.2516.
Ongoing development and 6G RoadmapThe 6G Framework Recommendation describes the relationship between 6G and existing IMT. Also, it describes the relationship between 6G and other access technologies such as non-terrestrial networks of IMT (including satellite communication systems, HIBS and UASs4 ) and other non-IMT terrestrial networks (including Wi-Fi and broadcast). In addition, overall timelines for technology development, standardization, commercialization and spectrum are described and depicted.
The successful completion of the global 6G Vision marks the official start of the journey toward 6G standardization. It is a fundamental milestone in the development of 6G, which will be implemented through global cooperation in accordance with the timeline set by ITU-R. In the next three years starting from 2024, ITU-R WP 5D will focus on the study of detailed technical performance requirements and the evaluation criteria and methodologies, paving the way for the technology proposal evaluation in the last phase of the IMT-2030 cycle, i.e. from 2027 to 2030. Meanwhile, 3GPP will continue the evolution of 5G into 5G Advanced, also known as 5.5G, and is expected to start 6G technology standardization in Release 20 around the second half of 2025 and prepare the technology proposal for ITU-R evaluation around late 2028 and early 2029, with the aim of completing the specifications of IMT-2030 in 2030.
6G is the next playground of innovations. It is expected to go on the market around 2030. 5.5G or 5G Advanced is a natural bridge for the evolution from 5G toward 6G. The ambition of our 6G vision is to make our planet and the human society as a whole an intelligently connected and sustainably developed global village.
The successful completion of the global 6G Vision marks the official start of the journey toward 6G standardization. It is a fundamental milestone in the development of 6G, which will be implemented through global cooperation in accordance with the timeline set by ITU-R. In the next three years starting from 2024, ITU-R WP 5D will focus on the study of detailed technical performance requirements and the evaluation criteria and methodologies, paving the way for the technology proposal evaluation in the last phase of the IMT-2030 cycle, i.e. from 2027 to 2030. Meanwhile, 3GPP will continue the evolution of 5G into 5G Advanced, also known as 5.5G, and is expected to start 6G technology standardization in Release 20 around the second half of 2025 and prepare the technology proposal for ITU-R evaluation around late 2028 and early 2029, with the aim of completing the specifications of IMT-2030 in 2030.
6G is the next playground of innovations. It is expected to go on the market around 2030. 5.5G or 5G Advanced is a natural bridge for the evolution from 5G toward 6G. The ambition of our 6G vision is to make our planet and the human society as a whole an intelligently connected and sustainably developed global village.
3GPP Stage-1 Workshop on IMT2030 Use cases [8-10. may 2024.]
The objective of this workshop is to bring 3GPP closer to the ongoing initiatives of various global/regional research organizations and MRPs related to the 6G use cases. This collaborative effort is of utmost importance as SA1 undertakes the task of defining the requirements and use cases for 6G in Rel-20.It was the opportunity for different communities to present their views on 6G/IMT2030 Use Cases. These communities are Operators; Verticals; Regional Alliances and ITU.