Tommy Svensson, Full Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Chalmers and Lead local organiser and TPC Chair of EuCNC & 6G Summit 2023, greeted everyone welcome to this year’s 6G Summit held 6-9 June at The Swedish Exhibition & Congress Centre in Gothenburg.
“Good morning, distinguished guests, delegates, ladies, and gentlemen. It is my honour to welcome everyone today to the EuCNC & 6G Summit in Gothenburg, the city which is currently celebrating its 400-year anniversary”.
The theme for this year’s EuCNC & 6G Summit is “6G for a green and digital transition”.
“6G is in an excellent position to help address most societal needs as identified by United Nations sustainability development goals targeted for 2030, which is the same year as 6G is planned to be rolled out.”
From a technical perspective, 6G should enable interactions between the human world and our senses, bodies, intelligence, and values.
Magnus Frodigh, Vice President and Head of Research, Ericsson, gave the first presentation of the day on the topic: “6G – Connecting a cyber-physical world”.
The rollout of 5G will enable robust new solutions for a wide range of social, environmental, and economic challenges. We are already on the way towards the next paradigm shift formed by a combination of emerging technology trends. That paradigm shift will take us to the 6G era which will give rise to challenges beyond what even 5G can meet. The increasing expectations set a clear target for us in the industry and research community — 6G should contribute to an efficient, human-friendly, sustainable society through ever-present intelligent communication.
Ted Rappaport, Professor at New York University, US gives his view on what we can expect with 6G and why. How do we make sure we make wireless sustainable. Safety and sustainability are going to become very important to our industry.
When speaking about safety, Professor Ted Rappaport expresses that the industry should start looking, when we go up to sub terahertz, to make sure when we go above 100 gigahertz, that there are no biological effects that could be harmful.
One of the last keynote speakers is Andrea Conti, Professor at University of Ferrara, Italy, who speaks about Localization-of-Things, which is critical for providing situation awareness in a diverse set of applications, including smart environments, vehicle autonomy, asset tracking, medical services, and environment sensing.
Tommy Svensson is very satisfied with the conference, which he believes confirms the ongoing work towards 6G is converging.
“The feeling is that we now have a shared vision. Four years ago, the ideas were initiated and visions were set (in Finland even earlier). Now we are on our way, working on refinements and technical enablement. The challenges we face are global and, in some cases, political.”
In conclusion there is now a great need for significant interaction with society and to create an awareness of the possibilities of AI in 6G.
Overall, the EuCNC & 6G Summit 2023 was a success with 894 registered participants, the second largest ever in the conference series. Next year’s EuCNC & 6G Summit will be held in Antwerp, Belgium 3–6 June 2024.