A Tractable Approach to Massive Communication and Ubiquitous Connectivity in 6G Standardization

TL;DR

This paper investigates the theoretical limits and proposes a tractable spectrum reuse architecture for massive communication and ubiquitous connectivity in 6G, considering hardware constraints and interference management.

Contribution

It introduces a mean-field-approximation-based analysis and a low-overhead spectrum reuse scheme tailored for 6G use cases, enhancing standardization efforts.

Findings

Channel orthogonalization benefits massive communication.

CSI sharing is unnecessary for interfering links.

Relays and UAVs improve energy and spectrum efficiency.

Abstract

The full-scale 6G standardization has attracted considerable recent attention, especially since the first 3GPP-wide 6G workshop held in March 2025. To understand the practical and fundamental values of 6G and facilitate its standardization, it is crucial to explore the theoretical limits of spectrum, energy, and coverage efficiency considering practical hardware and signaling constraints. In this paper, we present a mean-field-approximation-based investigation on two out of six use case scenarios defined by IMT-2030, namely, massive communication and ubiquitous connectivity. Being aware of the limitation in interference cancellation owing to constrained cost and hardware complexity, we investigate the spectrum reuse architecture in both usage scenarios. We propose a tractable spectrum reuse with low signaling overhead consumed for channel estimation and channel state information (CSI) feedback. Our analysis indicates that the massive communication over cellular and device-to-device (D2D) networks can benefit from channel orthogonalization, while it is unnecessary to share the CSI of interfering links. Moreover, deploying relays or movable base stations, e.g. unmanned aerial vehicle, yields substantial energy and spectrum gain for ubiquitous connectivity, despite introducing interference. As such, the mean-field-optimization-based evaluation is expected to positively impact 6G and NextG standardization in 3GPP and other standardization bodies.