Skolkovo warned about the impossibility of developing 6G communications bypassing 5G

Skoltech Rector Kuleshov called the idea of ​​switching to 6G communications bypassing 5G “stupid.”The development of fifth-generation communications in RUSSIA is constrained by the lack of domestic equipment

Alexander Kuleshov, rector of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), believes that the development of sixth generation (6G) mobile communications in the country is impossible without the emergence of 5G networks.

“This is complete nonsense in terms of setting up: switching to 6G without going through 5G will not work. Simply because in mobile communications the new generation is an incremental technological improvement of the existing standard,” Kuleshov told RBC in a joint interview with Igor Drozdov, HEAD of the Skolkovo Foundation (the full version of the interview will be published on Monday, August 15).

At the end of July, Kommersant, citing a source familiar with the development of the project, wrote that Skoltech and the Radio Research Institute (NII Radio) could receive more than 30 billion rubles by 2025. from the 6G research budget. As Oleg Ivanov, NIIR General DIRECTOR, told the publication, these funds are planned to be directed to the development of equipment from the level of prototypes to production, issues of the component base, development of the necessary changes in regulatory legal acts and research into the electromagnetic safety of new networks. The article also claimed that “in Russia they decided to develop the 6G format, bypassing the 5G stage”, without explaining who came up with such an idea.

Kuleshov insists that Skoltech did not directly request 30 billion rubles. According to him, the institute is doing “some things in the field of photonics, architectural design, algorithms and coding, without which 6G will definitely not be possible,” and now it faces “research tasks to develop key components of the 6G base station.” This is the first phase of research. Whether other structures requested the specified amount, he did not specify. At the beginning of 2020, Kuleshov told RBC that the implementation of the first stage of the project to create the production of components for optoelectronics will require 9.2 billion rubles. for the creation of infrastructure, and at the second stage - another 17.7 billion rubles. to launch small-scale contract production.

According to Igor Drozdov, Skolkovo is now creating various consortiums to bring together developers and customers in different areas in order to replace imports of Western products and solutions that became unavailable after the start of the military operation. One such consortium is being set up in the telecom industry, a project to build 4G and 5G mobile base stations with Skoltech, he said, declining to elaborate.

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In early August, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasuryadded the Skolkovo Foundation, Skoltech and the Skolkovo Technopark to the SDN sanctions list. At that time, some experts feared that this would limit access to American technologies and "seriously" complicate the development of telecommunications equipment on an open interface, including for the 6G standard. However, Alexander Kuleshov said that this will not affect the developments in the field of 5G and 6G. “Legally, we have lost quite a lot, but from a practical point of view, there is no trouble. Access to the latest technologies, industrial equipment was closed to us not after the start of a special military operation, in fact, it was not there for all the years of the existence of the Russian Federation, ”he explained. According to Kuleshov, in order to develop the 6G standard, you need to participate in the work of international groups, but you can do this "if you are allowed." “With admission, the story is very difficult. To have a voice in the standards committee, you must first sit in it as an observer, and then make a contribution to the development, which will be accepted, ”he said. At the same time, the rector of Skoltech pointed out that standards committees are more of a "battlefield between giants" - companies developing telecommunications equipment Samsung, HUAWEI, Ericsson, etc. From his point of view, for the development of 6G in Russia, first of all, “brains and qualifications” are needed.

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After the release of the publication, Oleg Ivanov, General Director of the Radio Research Institute, emphasized that “no one has ever voiced the decision to develop 6G bypassing 5G networks.” “People close to telecom understand that this is just nonsense,” he said. According to Ivanov, the main task of the roadmap for the development of 6G, which the Radio Research Institute developed jointly with Skoltech, is to defend Russia's position in the international arena through the relevant organizations. We are talking about studies of the radio frequency spectrum applicable in 6G technology, as well as electromagnetic safety issues in devices for such networks. “Research must start now, otherwise there will be no 6G standard in Russia either by 2030 or 2040. It just needs to be accepted as a fact. If this is not done now, 6G networks will have the same problems as 5G now,” he said.

What is expected from 6G

Now the world is actively building 5G networks, work on 6G has just begun. According to Samsung's expectations, the completion of the development of the 6G standard will occur by 2028, and commercial networks will begin to appear en masse in 2030. It is assumed that the main users of these networks will be both people and various machines, and they will feature augmented reality (XR) services that create the effect of presence, high-quality mobile hologram, digital copies of various objects, etc.

There are no commercial 5G networks in Russia yet, only test ones. According to the decision of the regulators, the frequencies of 4.8-4.99 GHz and 27.1-27.5 GHz have been allocated for the development of this standard in the country, while the 3.4-3.8 GHz range is the most common in the world, it is on it that major manufacturers of telecommunications equipment and user devices. Russian operators have repeatedly asked to allocate 3.4-3.8 GHz frequencies to them, but were refused due to the fact that in Russia this resource is occupied by the means of the Ministry of Defense and Roscosmos. Operators cannot use the dedicated frequencies, because according to the conditions of the allocation, they must build networks on Russian-made equipment, which does not yet exist.

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Skoltech is also involved in the development of domestic 5G equipment. As Alexander Kuleshov said in an interview, they developed a prototype 5G base station and tested it in operator laboratories in Moscow and St. Petersburg . “So far, the main functionality has actually been implemented, but it works fine: in tests, the speed is significantly more than 1 Gb / s and reaches 1.5 Gb / s, which corresponds to foreign analogues. By the end of the year, we plan to make a mixed test site on the territory of Skolkovo, which will simultaneously operate our 5G base stations and stations of one of the well-known vendors, which will allow us to work out a realistic deployment scenario in the Russian operator’s network,” Kuleshov said. He did not name details.

Rostec is also developing 5G equipment in Russia. In January of this year, the state corporation presented to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin a functional model of a domestic 5G base station built on a Russian electronic component base. As representatives of Rostec said, the company plans to carry out the first deliveries of such equipment in 2023, and will begin mass production in 2024. However, in mid-July, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the results of Rostec's projects in the field of creating 5G networks, manufacturing equipment for the widespread introduction of the Internet of Things and developing the microelectronic industry "modest" as "modest".