Plenary I: Disrupting NextG

As 5G takes to the airwaves, we now turn our imagination to the next generation of wireless technology. The promise of this technology has created an international race to innovate, with significant investment by government as well as industry. And much innovation is needed as 6G aspires to not only support significantly higher data rates than 5G, but also improved reliability along with excellent coverage indoors and out, including for underserved areas. New architectures including edge computing must be designed to drastically enhance efficient resource allocation while also reducing latency for real-time control. Breakthrough energy-efficiency architectures, algorithms and hardware will be needed so that wireless devices can be powered by tiny batteries, energy-harvesting, or over-the-air power transfer. And signal processing will play an outsized role in the underlying technologies for NextG as well as the “killer apps” that will drive its deployment and success. This talk will describe what the wireless future might look like along with some of the innovations and breakthroughs required to realize this vision.