Radar and communication could converge for 6G
Although 5G has just started to be rolled out around the world, and many of the fantastic possibilities with 5G are yet to be discovered, academia has already started to discuss 6G, the technology for the next decade.
Exactly what will be included in 6G has not been decided but one hot topic is the convergence of communication and sensing. In 5G-NR communication in the mmWave frequency range was driven by Operators not only for capacity reasons, but also for enabling services and applications requiring ultra-low latency and Gbit/s data rates, opening up for challenging use cases such as Lewis Hamilton driving a Formula 1 car from home.
The mmWave frequency range is highly suitable for sensing and radar purposes due to the short radio wavelength enabling localization and positioning in the mm to cm range. Joint sensing and communication is being discussed, where a communication system not only communicates but also senses the environment and basically uses mmWave radar for the detection and positioning of objects. Combining sensing and communication will facilitate disruptive innovations and novel businesses that currently may be hard to imagine, in the coming decade.
The enabler for joint sensing and communication is beamforming, which very much will be facilitated by a cost efficient and scalable radio architecture that can be placed in handheld devices and in infrastructure nodes.
The most promising system architecture for joint sensing and communication applications is based on digital beamforming, thereby making digital beamforming the future-proof choice for the mmWave frequency range.
BeammWave delivers a sustainable and scalable digital beamforming solution for the 5G mmWave frequency range. At BeammWave we are closely following the progress of 6G research in industry and academia as to offer the preferred digital beamforming radio architecture for mmWave devices also for the coming decade.
