Qualcomm Logo Blue

Air interface innovations

The 6G vision: Qualcomm on foundational research priorities

While 6G deployments likely won’t start until around 2030, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. is steadily working on core areas of the next generation of cellular. During Mobile World Congress 2023, Vice President of Engineering Tingfang Ji lays out the link between 5G Advanced air interface innovations, including full duplex, ML-based air interfaces, advanced positioning, sidelink and other forward-applicable technologies. With regard to 6G, Ji considers how the upper mid-band (7-16 GHz), and supporting Giga-MIMO radios, could be positioned as the primary coverage layer in the future.

Qualcomm uses AI to enhance E2E communications

In these demonstrations, Qualcomm highlights how machine learning-based mmWave beam management and predictive beam selection improve system performance. Further, and against the backdrop of RAN disaggregation, Qualcomm demos multi-vendor, cross-node machine learning-based channel state feedback, resulting in a more efficient and performant data-driven air interface.

 

Qualcomm is bringing next-gen cellular air interface innovations

Getting the most efficiency and performance out of valuable spectrum is key to operator success as 5G proliferates and 6G takes shape. In this demo, Qualcomm shows full-duplex communications with simultaneous uplink and downlink. By using interference mitigation techniques, Qualcomm supported full-duplex transmission without uplink or downlink performance degradation. Full-duplex improves system-level throughput, latency and coverage.

Giga-MIMO and sub-THz spectrum innovation

With an eye on the further development and deployment of 5G Advanced and the advent of 6G toward the end of the decade, Qualcomm is continuing to expand into new spectrum bands to increase network efficiency and performance. In this video, learn how the upper mid-band (7 GHz to 24 GHz) can be used for the wide-area coverage associated with sub-7 GHz bands and the capacity of mmWave frequencies. Like massive MIMO has done for 5G, Giga-MIMO adds additional antenna elements and other technologies showing how 5G Advanced and 6G will evolve. In a second demo, Qualcomm showcases how the sub-THz bands associated with 6G can deliver up to 300 Gbps over distances up to 500 meters for use cases like wireless fronthaul and wireless data centers.

 

Click here to visit Qualcomm.