Toward Native Artificial Intelligence in 6G Networks: System Design, Architectures, and Paradigms

TL;DR

This paper discusses the design of 6G network architectures that integrate AI as a core component, emphasizing new system structures, intelligent workflows, and converged services to enable pervasive AI access and 'everything as a service' capabilities.

Contribution

It proposes a novel end-to-end 6G architecture with independent data and intelligent planes, focusing on AI workflow management and converged connectivity and computing services.

Findings

End-to-end 6G architecture with independent data and intelligent planes

Enhanced AI workflow orchestration and management

Provision of converged connectivity and computing services

Abstract

The mobile communication system has transformed to be the fundamental infrastructure to support digital demands from all industry sectors, and 6G is envisioned to go far beyond the communication-only purpose. There is coming to a consensus that 6G will treat Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the cornerstone and has a potential capability to provide "intelligence inclusion", which implies to enable the access of AI services at anytime and anywhere by anyone. Apparently, the intelligent inclusion vision produces far-reaching influence on the corresponding network architecture design in 6G and deserves a clean-slate rethink. In this article, we propose an end-to-end system architecture design scope for 6G, and talk about the necessity to incorporate an independent data plane and a novel intelligent plane with particular emphasis on end-to-end AI workflow orchestration, management and operation. We also highlight the advantages to provision converged connectivity and computing services at the network function plane. Benefiting from these approaches, we believe that 6G will turn to an "everything as a service" (XaaS) platform with significantly enhanced business merits.