Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

5G has entered the stage of commercial deployment, offering a wide array of services and exciting opportunities. However, it falls short in meeting the performance requirements for emerging services, such as ultra-reliable and low-latency communication, further enhanced mobile broadband, and massive machine-type communication. These shortcomings include global coverage, ultra-low latency, high data rate transmission, dense, reliable and secure connections, high-precision positioning, low power consumption, and ubiquitous intelligence. These limitations, along with the need to support strict quality-of-service requirements, are driving efforts to define the next generation of networks, the 6G. The advent of 6G is anticipated to bring a significant and revolutionary shift and is expected to possess exceptional capabilities to meet the demands of a future data-driven society, ushering in a new era of connectivity. Specifically, in the era of 6G, a wide range of applications with stringent requirements will emerge, including holographic communication, high-mobility autonomous vehicles, and digital twins for connected physical systems. 6G aims to realize this vision by: a) Providing ultra-high data rates through the use of technologies like cell-free massive MIMO and smart reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), optimizing radio spectrum efficiency and expanding coverage into higher frequencies. b) Ensuring global coverage with non-terrestrial networks (NTN) utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles and satellite communications. c) Achieving high energy efficiency through technologies like energy harvesting, such as backscattering communications and simultaneous wireless information and power transfer. d) Enabling high-precision positioning and high-resolution 3D wireless imaging through the integration of sensing and communication (ISAC). e) Connecting intelligence with machine learning (ML) capabilities, digitizing the physical world. Reaching this technological leap forward presents a multitude of challenges, including: 1) Effectively managing inter/intra cell interference in presence of a massive number of devices. 2) Efficiently estimating the channel state information of RIS. 3) Successfully leveraging satellites to serve users with limited terrestrial channels. 4) Efficiently allocating spectrum and integrating various emerging technologies such as RIS and Terahertz bands. 5) Considering trade-offs to maximize the utility of ISAC. 6) Maximizing the use of available communication and sensing infrastructure to provide both services. 7) Designing optimal waveforms to ensure reliable communication services and accurate sensing outcomes. 8) Utilizing advanced ML techniques to enhance sensing and localization. 9) Addressing the complexities of ML models to ensure high-quality representation of the digital world. These challenges, along with several others, must be addressed comprehensively to fully realize the 6G vision, as outlined in this proposal.