6G, a sixth iteration of the long-standing technology standard for cellular networks, may be fast enough to allow users to download more than 20 movies in a single second, according to a recent test conducted by researchers at University College London, one in which the team managed to send data at speeds as high as 938 Gbps over a 6G network. This level of performance is reported by some to be 9,000x faster than 5G, which launched eight years ago, in July 2016. An abstract for the research that can be found in Journal of Lightwave Technology, including a diagram of the bands involved, can be found below.
…we demonstrate an ultra-wide 145 GHz bandwidth wireless transmission of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signals over the air, covering 5–150 GHz frequency region. This is achieved by combining the merits of high-speed electronics and microwave photonics technologies. Specifically, the signals over 5–75 GHz are generated using high speed digital-to-analog converters. The high frequency mm-wave band signals, including W-band (75–110 GHz) and D-band (110–150 GHz) signals, are generated by mixing optically modulated signals with frequency-locked lasers on high-speed photodiodes. By frequency-locking two pairs of narrow linewidth lasers and referring to a common quartz oscillator, we generated W-band and D-band signals with stable carrier frequency and reduced phase noise compared to free-running lasers, maximizing the use of spectrum. By using OFDM format and bit loading, we achieve 938 Gb/s transmission data rate with less than 300 MHz gap between different RF and mm-wave bands.