From Everyday Living to Societal Goals: The Promise of 6G Applications

August 19, 2024

Ki-Dong Lee, John Macias, Dr. Mitch Tseng, and Carroll Gray-Preston

In the 6G future, applications will be pivotal in shaping the future of connectivity, enabling advanced and innovative use cases, and ensuring that the benefits of 6G technology are widely accessible and sustainable. To prepare for that future, ATIS’ Next G Alliance (NGA) Applications Working Group (AWG) is exploring emerging opportunities anticipated with 6G applications. This work aims to assist North American organizations in planning for future market and technological shifts. The use cases driving these applications, markets and shifts, can be summarized in four foundational areas: Everyday Living, Experience, Critical Roles, and Societal Goals.

Living: Enhancing the quality of everyday living
Experience: Improving experiences in areas such as entertainment, learning, and healthcare
Critical Roles: Enhancing critical roles in sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and public safety
Societal Goals: Achieving and improving high-level societal goals

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A comprehensive approach is needed to understand how 6G can be applied to solve future challenges in everyday life. This involves identifying current pain points and gaps in existing digital services that rely on network connectivity and exploring potential 6G applications to address these issues. Collaboration with experts from academia and government, as well as both traditional and emerging telecom industry players is crucial for gathering diverse insights. By aligning these with consumer needs, service providers can develop innovative 6G solutions that enhance the quality of everyday life and address the other areas ripe for innovation that 6G applications can deliver.

Deriving Design Considerations for 6G Services

Image generated by Midjourney
Image generated by Midjourney
Image generated by Midjourney
Image generated by Midjourney

Since 2021, the AWG has been developing insights into the implications and design considerations for 6G services. In 2023, the AWG published these findings, focusing on four promising categories of applications and use cases toward a high-level societal goal of improved quality of living:

Multi-Sensory Extended Reality (XR) in 6G. This paper highlights the potential of multi-sensory extended reality (XR), reviews the current state of the technology and its evolution from 5G, and outlines the requirements and potential research areas necessary to advance XR applications.
Network-Enabled Robotic and Autonomous Systems. Integrating advanced communication technology into robotic and autonomous systems has the potential to revolutionize various industries, including logistics, transportation, manufacturing, education, healthcare, and more.
The Evolution of Personalized Digital Experiences Through 6G Technologies. Highlighting four core areas: shopping, healthcare and wellness, travel, and education, this paper presents tailored scenarios for the elderly, working parents, and young students and explains the cutting-edge technologies enabling these services.
Distributed Sensing and Communications. This paper explores use cases that can enhance the quality of daily life, aligned with the expectation that one of the aspirational roles of 6G is the intelligent collection, processing, and distribution of data to authorized users or applications whenever and wherever needs arise.

Up Next

The NGA continues to explore how those findings might shape the near-future 6G market. This includes collaborating with regional alliances, such as through a Joint Workshop with 6G Forum of South Korea, and sharing the NGA’s vision at global 6G standardization events, such as the 3GPP Stage-1 Workshop on IMT2030 Use Cases. ATIS’ NGA Applications Working Group is developing AWG Report Volume 2 as part of this effort, with plans to include several additional use case categories.

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About the Authors

Ki-Dong Lee

Chair at Next G Alliance Applications Working Group

Dr. Ki-Dong Lee (Ph.D’01) has actively contributed to research and standardization of mobile/ satellite communications systems for over 20+ years, working with various organizations such as IEEE, NGMN Alliance, SAE, and 3GPP. Ki-Dong served two terms as Vice Chair of 3GPP System Architecture WG1 (2015-2019). Additionally, he acted as a guest editor for IEEE Wireless Communications on the topic of Hybrid Terrestrial and Satellite Networks (2004-2005). He is also an author of a book (2001), several book chapters, and numerous publications in IEEE journals. He has been actively involved in various emerging 6G applications, demonstrating his commitment to staying at the forefront of technology. As part of his efforts spanning multiple industries, Dr. Lee has organized and participated in IEEE’s leading Industry Forum/Panels ("A Smart Network of Service Robots" IEEE Globecom’20, IEEE World Forum IoT’22, IEEE ICC’23).

John Macias

Vice Chair at Next G Alliance Applications Working Group

John Macias works among several groups in the TPD and Device Technology space. His projects include but are not limited to in-depth collaborations with DoD and DoE as well as Veterans Affairs Healthcare Innovation, specifically in architecting next generation networks. In his previous work, John was responsible for the Network Systems Performance of Verizon’s Northern CA, Northern NV Infrastructure. John also served as a Distinguished Engineer within the Network Planning organization where he worked on technology roadmaps and proof of concepts with global vendors. He has over 25 years of experience in the wireless industry, has been granted 30+ patents, and has worked for several radio and antenna vendors as well as wireless carriers. He conducts research in next generation radio access technology and non-terrestrial network interoperability while continuing to pursue additional patents.

Dr. Mitch Tseng

Vice Chair at Next G Alliance Applications Working Group

As Next G Alliance (NGA) Applications Working Group Vice Chair, Dr. Tseng’s work focuses on enhancing the “Digital World Experience” through applications for 6G and beyond. He had been leading the development of various telecommunication standards in TIA, 3GPP2, 3GPP, and helped established oneM2M prior to joining the Industry IoT Consortium (IIC). His latest passion is to promote technologies such as Edge Computing, Digital Twin, AR/XR, Li-Fi, and AI, and roll them into IIoT and 6G Services. In addition to being a vocal leader in the NGA Mitch is Co-Chairing the Marketing and Innovation Working Group, the Edge Computing Task Group and the Testbed Council in IIC. He is also serving as the Rapporteur of ISO TC204 WG16 focusing on ITS Communication standard aspects.

Carroll Gray-Preston

Vice President – Innovation at ATIS

As Vice President of Innovation at ATIS, Carroll Gray-Preston drives the development of initiatives that put emerging Innovation Agenda priorities, as set by the ATIS Board of Directors, into action. She also works to advance established ATIS initiatives, most recently in the areas of NFV, IoT and Distributed Ledger/Blockchain technologies. Her role encompasses identifying emerging ICT trends and how ATIS members can advance their business priorities in light of them. Gray-Preston honed her strengths as an R&D leader, systems architect and strategic planner most recently serving as Vice President of Strategic Operations and Customer Success at GENBAND (Nortel Networks) and Leader of Technology and Planning, Office of the CTO, where her expertise spanned Agile methodologies, platform and product strategy, cultural change and critical launch strategies. She is a patent holder in the area of Multimedia Services and IP Interconnect. Before joining ATIS as a Vice President she led a standards task force that delivered a major report on the PSTN transition, which was used as input to evolve FCC services standards.