Upgrading MIMO to Unlock Next 6G Frontiers
The rapid advancements in AI prompting are expected to generate an enormous surge in demand for higher data rates and increased capacity, which 6G must deliver over 5G. However, these advancements come with stringent energy constraints, making it essential to rethink and upgrade radio transmission technologies.
In the 1990s, wireless radio access experienced a groundbreaking transformation with the introduction of multi-antenna base stations communicating with multi-antenna terminals, commonly known as MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) and its related innovations. A decade later, this concept evolved further to coordinate antennas across multiple base stations, giving rise to technologies such as Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP), massive MIMO, distributed MIMO, and what is often referred to today as cell-free MIMO.
Now, it is time to revisit MIMO and explore the next frontiers in beamforming and detection. Beamforming has traditionally been driven by increasing the number of antennas and narrowing the beam to improve accuracy and efficiency. Detection, on the other hand, has shifted from early enthusiasm for computationally heavy sphere decoding to more practical linear detectors.
In this context, we propose two promising upgrades: volumetric beam-focusing and box decoding. Volumetric beam-focusing has the potential to improve energy efficiency and spatial resolution, while box decoding could provide a practical yet powerful alternative to existing detection techniques. Together, these innovations hold immense promise for advancing cellular and WLAN radio networks to meet the demands of 6G and beyond.
Gerhard P. Fettweis, F’09, earned a Ph.D. under H. Meyr at RWTH Aachen (Germany) in 1990. After a postdoc at IBM Research, San Jose, he joined TCSI, Berkeley, USA. Since 1994 he is Vodafone Chair Professor at TU Dresden, Germany. Since 2018 he is also founding Scientific Director & CEO of the Barkhausen Institute. He researches wireless communications and chip design, coordinates 5G++Lab Germany and the German Cluster-for-Future SEMECO. His team spun-out 30 tech startups, and he initiated 6 platform entities. Gerhard is member of the US National Academy of Engineering, the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), the German Academy of Engineering (Acatech), and Fellow of IEEE, VDE/ITG, National Academy of Inventors, EURASIP, WWRF, and DATE. He is active in organizing IEEE conferences.