A Queen's professor has been awarded a five-year prestigious Research Chair to study the next phase of telecommunications technology.
Professor Trung Duong, from the Centre for Wireless Innovation at the Belfast university, will lead the comprehensive study into 6G over the next half-decade.
The research will provide an opportunity to go beyond 5G over the next ten years.
It is understood that Nokia Bell Labs will also be an active collaborator in the proposed project.
The collaboration is expected to also bring streams of external funding and enable research staff to work on ground-breaking research.
Speaking following the announcement, Professor Duong said he hoped the research would help drive the 6G revolution forward.
He added: “Wireless communications and associated digital technologies have been shaping our planet in an unprecedented way – not least in the current battle against Covid-19.
"Increasingly, we live in an interconnected, smart, globalised society in which the physical and information worlds are inextricably linked.
"The ever-increasing number of wireless and mobile devices requiring ultra-reliable and low-latency functionality is generating an exponential growth in data traffic – a 10,000-fold growth is predicted to occur by 2030."
“Our rapidly changing world is currently undergoing a ‘fourth industrial revolution’ that is currently being driven by 5G communications and cyber-physical systems," he added.
"My driving passion is to take that revolution forward into the next decade and for 6G to enable a future that benefits all of society – [including] remote medical diagnosis and surgery, autonomous self-driving vehicles, virtual and augmented reality for education, healthcare and entertainment and all within smart, safe cities, and disaster management.”
