India’s Quest for 6G Network

In News

• Recently, the Prime Minister launched the Bharat 6G vision document and The 6G Testbed as part of its 6G mission.

About

• The 6G Testbed will provide academic institutions, industries, start-ups, and MSMEs, and industry, among others, a platform to test and validate evolving ICT technologies..
• Bharat 6G vision document is prepared by the Technology Innovation Group on 6G (TIG-6G)to develop a roadmap and action plans for 6G in India.

What is 6G (sixth-generation wireless)?

• The 6G (sixth-generation wireless) has been conceived as a far superior technology promising internet speeds up to 100 times faster than 5G.
• As opposed to 5G, which at its peak can offer internet speeds up to 10 gigabits per second, 6G promises to offer ultra-low latency with speeds up to 1 terabits per second.
• Use Cases:
  • Use cases of 6G include remote-controlled factories, constantly communicating self-driven cars and smart wearables taking inputs directly from human senses.

India’s Road Map

• The Government has appointed an apex council to oversee the 6G project and focus on issues such as standardisation, identification of the spectrum for 6G usage,  ecosystem for devices and systems, and figuring out finances for research and development.
• The government plans to implement the 6G project in two phases.
  • In phase one, support will be provided to explorative ideas that show promise and potential for acceptance by the global peer community .They will be supported till establishment of  their use cases and benefits leading to  creation of implementational IPs and testbeds leading to commercialisation as part of phase two.
• To fund research and innovation on 6G, the government plans creation of a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore to facilitate various funding instruments such as grants, loans, VC fund, fund of funds, etc. for the next 10 years.

Challenges

• As 6G  supporting communication devices will be battery-powered 6G’s implementation will have a significant carbon footprint.
• The principles behind Spectrum Usage have to be rethought again .The government will have to explore shared use of spectrum, particularly in the higher frequency bands for 6G.
• The success of 6G’s implementation depends on reassessment and rationalisation of congested spectrum bands,adoption of captive networks for Industry 4.0 and enterprise use cases.
• Expansion of larger mid-band to meet the requirements of 5G+ and 6G technologies requires initiating a complex inter-ministerial process of repurposing several Usage bands .

Way Forward

• India has played Catch-uptill now in the development of telecommunication technologies . 6G presents a huge opportunity to utilise rapidly increasing digital infrastructure and for development of country specific use cases.

Source: IE.