A Comprehensive Survey on 6G Networks:Applications, Core Services, Enabling Technologies, and Future Challenges

TL;DR

This survey comprehensively reviews 6G networks, highlighting their potential applications, core services, enabling technologies, and the future challenges needed to support the growing demands of IoT and advanced communication use-cases.

Contribution

It provides an extensive overview of 6G requirements, trends, research activities, key technologies, and unresolved challenges, offering a holistic perspective on future wireless networks.

Findings

6G aims to support ultra-low latency and massive connectivity.

Emerging technologies include Tactile Internet and Terahertz communications.

Key challenges involve scalability, security, and energy efficiency.

Abstract

Cellular Internet of Things (IoT) is considered as de facto paradigm to improve the communication and computation systems. Cellular IoT connects massive number of physical and virtual objects to the Internet using cellular networks. The latest generation of cellular networks, e.g. fifth-generation (5G), use evolutionary and revolutionary technologies to notably improve the performance of wireless networks. However, given the envisioned new use-cases, e.g., holographic communication, and the ever-increasing deployment of massive smart-physical end-devices in IoT, the volume of network traffic has considerably raised, and therefore, the current generation of mobile networks cannot wholly meet the ever-increasing demands. Hence, it is envisioned that the next generation, sixth generation (6G) networks, need to play a critical role to alleviate such challenges in IoT by providing new communication services, network capacity, and ultra-low latency communications (uRLLC). In this paper, first, the need for 6G networks is discussed. Then, the potential 6G requirements and trends, as well as the latest research activities related to 6G are introduced e.g., Tactile Internet and Terahertz (THz). Furthermore, the key performance indicators, applications, new services, and the potential key enabling technologies for 6G networks are presented. Finally, several potential unresolved challenges for future 6G networks are presented.