Evolving Wireless Technology Towards 6G: The vision behind the SweWIN Center

ABSTRACT: The world is becoming increasingly digitalized and connected, and mobile broadband connectivity is the backbone of this development. The demand for capacity and service quality expectations are constantly increasing, which calls for continuous technological evolution. The wireless technology is developed in cycles; a new generation is developed during each decade and then deployed during the next decade. The first phase of the 5G roll-out has now finished, and the research community has shifted focus towards 6G, the sixth generation of mobile network technology.

Why do we need to further evolve the wireless technology towards 6G? In this seminar, I will describe the wireless evolution with a focus on mobile broadband applications, where the service quality is characterized by the data speed and traffic capacity. I will discuss how much faster wireless technology must become and what the real bottlenecks and technological challenges are. This leads us to the vision behind the new Vinnova Competence Center, Swedish Wireless Innovation Network (SweWIN), which focuses on making future technology more sustainable, resilient, and fair.

BIO:Emil Björnson is a Professor of Wireless Communication at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. He is an IEEE Fellow, Digital Futures Fellow, and Wallenberg Academy Fellow. He has a podcast and YouTube channel called Wireless Future. His research focuses on multi-antenna communications and radio resource management, using methods from communication theory, signal processing, and machine learning. He has authored four textbooks and has published a large amount of simulation code.

He has received the 2018 and 2022 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Awards in Wireless Communications, the 2019 EURASIP Early Career Award, the 2019 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 2019 IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Column Award, the 2020 Pierre-Simon Laplace Early Career Technical Achievement Award, the 2020 CTTC Early Achievement Award, and the 2021 IEEE ComSoc RCC Early Achievement Award. He also received six Best Paper Awards at conferences.