Читать книгу Shaping Future 6G Networks - Группа авторов - Страница 39

The IoT and smart city paradigms have emerged as typical use cases for 4G and 5G networks, as well as for a wide set of noncellular communication technologies (e.g. LoRaWAN, LP‐WAN, among others). 6G will further expand these platforms, to ease the transition toward digital services in a wide range of business areas. Notably, Smart‐X (where X refers to everything) use cases will require ubiquitous coverage, with a support for more than 10⁷ connected devices per square kilometer, and high energy efficiency, so that zero‐energy devices can be globally deployed to gather environmental awareness, track complex processes (e.g. shipments, production lines), and then actuate data‐driven policies. Future Smart‐X scenarios will heavily rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to infer trends and behaviors, which will need to be driven by a constant stream of data from the network.

An area in which the importance of connectivity‐based digital services is central is that of agriculture and farming. A sensor‐enabled data pipeline is key to monitor the efficiency and results obtained when growing crop in very large areas. Moreover, the availability of data in this area makes it possible to track the evolution of terrain needs and characteristics and infer future trends in crop availability. Similarly, for animal breeding, connectivity‐based approaches allow farmers to monitor the position and health status of each single animal in the herd.

Data‐driven predictive analytics and monitoring are useful also for fleet management, as discussed in Section 2.3.4, and for smart warehouse management. In particular, with Smart‐X approaches, the status, position, and value of goods can be tracked with cheap sensors from the source (e.g. the factory in which the good is manufactured) to the warehouse in which it is stocked and, eventually, to the final destination. Moreover, for products such as home appliances, industrial machines, and robots, among others, embedded zero‐energy sensors can measure and report failures or anomalous behaviors toward an integrated factory‐to‐customer assistance and maintenance pipeline.

To this end, as previously discussed, it is important to provide low‐cost, low‐energy and highly available connectivity in 6G networks. Notably, Smart‐X applications need global coverage and the possibility of transmitting and receiving data with the same connection throughout the whole world. Consider, for example, the current production paradigm where a product may be manufactured in China, shipped to Europe (through either a ship or an airplane), further processed, and then delivered to a customer in the United States. To enable a seamless, global tracking and monitoring, the sensors on the device should be able to authenticate and securely transmit data, irrespective of the area in which the device is located. Moreover, given the scale of the deployment of Smart‐X sensors, it will be important to design 6G networks so that such sensors can be cheap, consume very little energy, and be easily disposable and/or reusable for different applications.