Today, the National Data Administration has publicly solicited opinions on the "Guidance for the Construction of National Data Infrastructure (Draft for Comments)." It mentions building high-speed data transmission networks to achieve efficient and flexible data transmission and interconnection between different terminals, platforms, and private networks, addressing issues such as insufficient data transmission capacity, high costs, and difficult interconnection. It supports basic telecommunications operators in integrating cloud-network technologies such as virtual networking, network protocol innovation, and intelligent task scheduling to form rapid multi-party networking and data exchange capabilities, supporting elastic bandwidth and multi-dimensional billing for data transmission tasks. It promotes the optimization and upgrade of traditional network facilities, orderly advances the evolution from 5G to 5G-A, and comprehensively promotes research and development innovation in 6G network technology.

The guidance document issued by the National Data Administration for public consultation reveals that China is actively promoting the optimization and upgrade of data transmission networks, not only focusing on the evolution from 5G to 5G-A but also looking ahead to the research and development innovation of 6G networks. This coincides with the industry's exploration of cutting-edge 6G technologies. In fact, as an extension and sublimation of 5G, 6G is receiving high attention from the global communications industry.

Recently, Academician Wang Jiangzhou, a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, was invited to attend the "2025 China AIoT Industry Annual Conference and IOT 2.0 Forward-looking Insight Ceremony." At the conference, he delivered a keynote speech on "Key Technologies for 6G Network Collaborative Sensing and Communication." From three dimensions - application scenarios, major challenges, and key technologies - Academician Wang unveiled the mysteries of 6G technology. This article summarizes Academician Wang's speech.

Key Points

The future 6G network is a new generation of mobile information network featuring deep integration of sensing, communication, and computing, with global coverage integrating air, space, and ground. Integrated sensing and communication technology empowers communication networks to perceive the world, facilitating the "Internet of Everything" and "Digital Twins."

Currently, 5G networks offer high connectivity, high speed, and low latency, benefiting millions of households and various industries. As the next-generation mobile communication technology, 6G adds new capabilities to 5G, including networked integrated sensing and communication, integrated communication, computing, and intelligence, and integration of air, space, and ground, forming the six capabilities of 6G defined by the International Telecommunication Union. Networked integrated sensing and communication is a crucial aspect of 6G's six capabilities.

Integrated sensing and communication enable a new business model with multi-functional networks, playing a vital role in scenarios such as low-altitude economy/regulation, connected vehicles, and smart factories, ensuring the smooth progress of related businesses.

Why Do We Need 6G?

Starting from practical application scenarios, Academician Wang revealed the limitations of 5G technology in vertical industry applications.

Although China's mobile communication technology has developed rapidly, with over 4 million 5G base stations, and 5G technology significantly improving data transmission rates and network capacity compared to 4G, bringing convenience to ordinary consumers, its application in vertical industries has fallen short of expectations.

The reason 5G has not yet become widespread is that its design is too uniform and has not yet met the needs of industry applications.

Taking industry applications as an example, we expect high-speed, large-capacity, and extremely low end-to-end latency. Especially in many vertical industries, such as robotic automated smart factories, the requirements for latency are extremely strict and must be very low. Currently, 5G equipment is bulky, not only in size but also with intense signal fluctuations and insufficient stability, making it difficult to deploy on a large scale. Although 5G remote operation is widely discussed, have we truly seen examples of 5G remote operation? In fact, they are rare because 5G technology has not yet met the technical standards required for remote operation. Therefore, we expect 5.5G technology to bring some applications to vertical industries, and we also need to consider the development of the next-generation mobile communication system - 6G mobile communication technology.

Why Do We Need 6G?

Primarily to better serve specific industry users, 6G needs to focus more on vertical industry applications. One of the keys to 6G design is to achieve a deep integration of the physical and virtual worlds, something that 5G has not fully achieved. To this end, the technical design requires new ideas, integrating information technologies such as communication, sensing, computing, and artificial intelligence, and conducting integrated design. The goal is to achieve a comprehensive effect far exceeding the sum of its individual parts through synergistic effects.

The future 6G network is a new generation of mobile information network featuring deep integration of sensing, communication, and computing, with global coverage integrating air, space, and ground. Integrated sensing and communication technology empowers communication networks to perceive the world, facilitating the "Internet of Everything" and "Digital Twins."

Application Scenario: Low-Altitude Economy

Integrated sensing and communication are crucial, involving not only comprehensive information services but also providing precise sensing information for end-users. Taking China's current emphasis on the low-altitude economy as an example, it has been regarded as an important direction for national economic development. However, one of the keys to developing the low-altitude economy is providing precise sensing services, such as knowing the exact location, moving direction, and speed of drones.

Connected Vehicles

The deployment of connected vehicles in 3G standards has been completed but has not garnered widespread attention. Currently, we are focusing resources on developing connected vehicle and road coordination technologies, which require establishing new networks. However, since significant investments have already been made in 5G networks, building new networks would increase financial pressure, slowing the development of autonomous driving measurement networks. We expect to provide comprehensive connected vehicle services in the 6G era, supporting advancements in driving technology.

Smart Factories

Autonomous driving technology constitutes a key branch in the field of smart factories. Currently, we have achieved the operation of dark factories, and building fully intelligent factories has become a key to development. In the operation of smart factories, design monitoring and park management play crucial roles. Major challenges faced by integrated sensing and communication: First, when targets scatter in multiple directions, how can we accurately understand the characteristics of these reflected signals? Given our commitment to serving the low-latency economy, we must deeply understand the flickering characteristics of channels. Second, when facing multiple targets, how can we effectively distinguish between them? Finally, how can we leverage mobile networks to enhance sensing capabilities? For operations, the network is the most valuable resource. Therefore, how to optimize the network through multi-node sensing, thereby improving our sensing efficiency, these three issues constitute the core of our research.

Currently, 5G networks offer high connectivity, high speed, and low latency, benefiting millions of households and various industries. As the next-generation mobile communication technology, 6G adds new capabilities to 5G, including networked integrated sensing and communication, integrated communication, computing, and intelligence, and integration of air, space, and ground, forming the six capabilities of 6G defined by the International Telecommunication Union. Networked integrated sensing and communication is a crucial aspect of 6G's six capabilities.

Integrated sensing and communication enable a new business model with multi-functional networks, playing a vital role in scenarios such as low-altitude economy/regulation, connected vehicles, and smart factories, ensuring the smooth progress of related businesses.

Major Issues

In collaborative sensing systems, when the transmitted beam hits a target, the signal scatters in various directions. Taking a vehicle target as an example, the scattering phenomenon is evident in different directions (as shown by the orange dashed lines in the figure). The scattering characteristics in these directions need to be described in detail through channel models. In practical applications, complex situations often arise where multiple sensing targets exist simultaneously. Therefore, how to detect and sense these multiple targets has become an urgent problem to be solved. Additionally, when multiple nodes are involved in the sensing system, how to effectively utilize these nodes for collaboration to improve sensing accuracy is the key to exploring the potential of collaborative sensing. These are the major issues we face.

Addressing the issues in networked integrated sensing, Academician Wang and his team have proposed a series of innovative solutions.

In terms of scattering characteristics research, addressing the challenge of unclear specific characteristics in networked collaborative sensing and communication, we have proposed a scattering characteristic model to describe the characteristics of directional changes when incident waves interact with targets, laying a solid foundation for subsequent research work.

In multi-target detection, addressing the challenge of potentially having multiple targets within a single beam in networked collaborative sensing and communication, we have developed multi-target detection and sensing technologies to fully leverage the performance of networked collaborative sensing and communication.

In multi-node collaboration, considering the large number of nodes in the network, we have proposed utilizing sensing data collected by these widely distributed nodes to improve sensing performance and reduce the cost of node selection and data transmission.

Key Technology: Scattering Characteristics

In sensing tasks, understanding the scattering characteristics of targets is crucial. The Radar Cross Section (RCS), as an important parameter for evaluating target scattering characteristics, plays a significant role in integrated sensing and communication technology. RCS is a physical quantity used to describe the scattering characteristics of a target to radar radiation, measuring the echo intensity generated by the target under radar wave illumination.

Multi-Target Sensing

Multi-target detection, resolution, and sensing are important application scenarios for networked collaborative sensing and communication. In multi-target sensing, when multiple targets exist within a single beam in the actual environment, how can we detect, resolve, and sense multiple targets? We need to conduct multi-dimensional precise estimation, including parameters such as the number of targets, target direction, distance, and radial velocity.

In actual sensing environments, multiple targets may exist within a single beam. How to detect, resolve, and sense multiple targets is a key issue that needs to be addressed.

Multi-Node Collaboration

In multi-node collaboration, intelligent fusion of multi-node data enhances sensing accuracy and reduces data transmission overhead. We have proposed intelligent fusion algorithms for multi-node data, as well as dynamic sensing clusters and ring networking structures, to achieve high-efficiency and high-precision sensing.

In collaborative sensing, using sensing data from multiple receiving nodes can enhance sensing accuracy. Specifically, there are multiple data fusion methods for multi-node data, such as soft fusion, which combines the received raw signals, and hard fusion, which combines the sensing results after each receiving node performs calculations. However, soft fusion faces issues of large data transmission volumes and complex data processing, while hard fusion, despite having low transmission overhead, results in low sensing accuracy after fusion. Therefore, we aim to achieve a balance between sensing accuracy and transmission overhead, realizing high-precision and high-efficiency sensing. We have proposed an intelligent data fusion method where multiple receiving nodes each measure the target's angle of arrival and delay and upload them to the location server. The server intelligently combines the measured angles and delays from multiple nodes to estimate the target's position, obtaining the optimal solution through alternating optimization of the target position and node weights. It can be found that the accuracy of the intelligent fusion method is comparable to that of soft fusion, but the transmission overhead can be effectively reduced.

Summary: 6G technology has a wide range of application scenarios, primarily focused on vertical industries. By addressing issues such as target scattering, multi-target differentiation, and networked collaborative sensing, key technologies include scattering characteristics, multi-target detection, and multi-node collaboration.

Here, IoT Intelligence would like to express special thanks to Academician Wang for his keynote speech. We can expect significant breakthroughs in 6G technology regarding integrated sensing and communication, providing strong technical support for 6G network application scenarios and promoting the widespread application of 6G technology in vertical industries.