Realizing 6G: The Operational Goals, Enabling Technologies of Future Networks, and Value-Oriented Intelligent Multi-Dimensional Multiple Access

The massive deployment of the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks are significantly accelerating the ongoing process of industrial and societal transformation. Disregard many impressive achievements, current scenario-specific, and communication-centric 5G technologies still face many challenges in empowering future applications with diverse requirements under stringent resource constraints. In this article, different perspectives of the future sixth generation (6G) networks, including the 6G operational goals, key performance indicators (KPIs), and enabling technologies, are analyzed and presented. In terms of its operational goals, we believe that 6G will serve as a holistic information and communication technology (ICT) platform by unifying the beyond communication capabilities in achieving its eventual goal of value realization by fulfilling the needs of people, industry, and society. With this understanding, the KPIs of 6G in different domains, which include capabilities of diverse and customized service provisioning, situational awareness discovery, and connected intelligence, as well as scalability, efficiency, and agility (SEA) of 6G enabled systems, are defined as 6G design objectives. Furthermore, key enabling technologies for achieving the KPIs are elaborated, including intelligent multi-dimensional multiple access, situational awareness enabled by edge intelligence and integration of communication, sensing, localization, and synchronization, as well as intelligent value-driven system orchestration and operation. Finally, our envisioned 6G concepts are exemplified by the proposed intelligent multi-dimensional multiple access, which demonstrates its effectiveness for value realization in 6G operation.