On the eve of TSDSI’s Roadmap Workshop, when Industry executives of leading wireless companies, Academia, Govt R&D, Verticals and Start-ups met at CDOT, Bengaluru to lay the foundation for Roadmap 2.0, the foremost thought in everyone’s mind was to leapfrog NDCP-2018 vision by looking at technologies beyond 5G. The NDCP-2018 was drafted by the government to achieve India’s transition to a digitally empowered economy and society via a three-pronged strategy – connect India, propel India and secure India.
During this one-day workshop, around 72 delegates participated and presented on a range of topics with a focus on enabling technologies such as backhaul, security and next-generation technologies beyond 5G. The enhancements to 5G technologies covered the following topics.
- Co-existence of Satellite and Terrestrial communication to enable satellite 5G services which are expected to have large commercial implications in certain segments.
- Innovation in Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN) for enabling non-public networks (Private Networks)
- Improved mechanisms of Dynamic Spectrum Management, for enabling value-added services in 5G networks.
- Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) for security.
- Spectrum requirements for backhaul, access and infrastructure requirements to meet NDCP Targets
Additionally, there were discussions around Rural Broadband architecture, mission-critical and utility communications and how to leverage Smart City infrastructure for proliferation in the Indian context.
The Roadmap workshop was followed by the Study Group meetings as a part of the TSDSI’s Technical Plenary on 5-6 March 2020 attended by 74 delegates who deliberated over the ongoing topics as well as new items. In acknowledgment of the fact that ITU is inviting contributions for new technologies to start work on “Beyond IMT 2020,” the Study Groups have initiated studies and invited contributions on future technologies to influence the Global deliberations on Specifications for Future Networks (such as 6G, Future Technologies-2030, etc.). For beyond 5G, TSDSI has initiated studies on ways to improve peak data rates and spectral efficiency with different air new interface technologies and new radio architectures that are open and provide a high degree of flexibility. Besides, TSDSI is critically studying cost-effective 5G Deployment options (e.g. Option-6) and Cloud Interoperability technologies which will enable seamless data interoperability. The findings from these studies will spearhead TSDSI’s future standardization activities leading to 6G.
Roadmap 2.0 will set the direction for future activities at TSDSI for the coming 3 years. India specific topics that should be pursued in future workshops related to Public Protection and Disaster Relief, IoT, Smart Cities standards architecture/stack, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and Data Center standard architecture/stack, Quantum machine learning, and ICN standards were also discussed. Additional workshops will be announced to strengthen Roadmap 2.0. Stay tuned!