State of the Art in beyond 5G and 6G Radio Communications Networks

Dear Colleagues,

The most recent contributions to the 3GPP standards (from Release 15 to Release 17) aim to serve as a key enabler for the evolution of the 5G Networks. Specifically, they have already allowed the mobile network operators to deploy and operate the first commercial 5G networks. Now, the research community and the industry have begun to explore the first solutions to implement beyond 5G and 6G networks. The main goal of these solutions will be to support services beyond enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine-type communication (mMTC), and ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC). For instance, holographic telepresence has sub-millisecond latency and higher than 1 Tbps bandwidth requirements. Another example is the Internet of Everything (IoE) which will require connection densities higher than 10^7 devices per km2, seven nines of network availability, sub-millisecond latency, per-user data rates above 1 Gbps, and 100 times the energy efficiency offered by 5G networks. Therefore, beyond 5G and 6G networks are expected to extend 5G capabilities to higher levels where millions of connected devices and applications could operate seamlessly with unprecedented trust and security levels, ultra-low-latency and extremely high bandwidth. Due to the large amount of recent scientific contributions around beyond 5G and 6G networks, review articles on this research field becomes crucial to accelerate the assimilation and understanding of all of these advancements into the existing body of knowledge.  

The objective of this Special Issue (SI) is to survey the most-recent solutions in the literature which shed light on those technological aspects that will make a reality the deployment and operation of beyond 5G and 6G Radio Access Networks (RAN). Topics covered will include but are not limited to:

• Management architectures for Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
• Channel modeling and signal processing for terahertz communications.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
• Big Data Analytics for Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
• Non-Terrestial Networks (NTR) in Beyond 5G and 6G Communications.
• Antenna Systems for Beyond 5G and 6G.
• Location awareness for Beyond 5G and 6G.
• Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) for Beyond 5G and 6G networks.
• Security aspects on Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
• Network slicing in Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
• TSN and Beyond 5G and 6G RAN integration.
• Emerging technologies and use cases in Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
• Enabling Deterministic Networking in Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
• Quantum Communications for Beyond 5G and 6G.
• Zero-touch networking in Beyond 5G and 6G.

Dr. Jonathan Prados-Garzon
Dr. Oscar Adamuz-Hinojosa
Guest Editors

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