International Symposium on 6G Networking

About The Symposium

The need for accelerating the digitalisation of economies and societies, as per the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals, is, among others, pushing for the sixth generation (6G) of mobile communications system. Hereby, 6G will continue the trajectory set out by its precedent 5G to establish an intelligent “society” with ubiquitous connections for all entities, both physical and virtual, under the trend of cyber-physical fusion.
Along with 6G, new applications and services, with extremely demanding requirements, will emerge. These new applications include, but are not limited to, Holographic Type Communications; Haptic Communications; High Precision Communications and Extremely Low-Latency Communications. Moreover, networking capabilities will continue their convergence across terrestrial, spatial and maritime connectivity, while being deeply intertwined with the ubiquitous computing power that increasingly surrounds us and will, in the near future, be deeply embedded into the networking infrastructure itself.
The original design of IP networking, adopted in the Internet as well as in cellular systems, focuses on one key pillar, namely ensuring global reachability through suitable packet forwarding mechanisms that would principally support best-effort services, along with the support of some differentiated services to a certain extent. However, the efficiency of current IP networking principles becomes highly questionable in the light of new required capabilities that include aspects such as precision delivery, collective communications, qualitative communications, support for high dynamicity, constraint-based addressing & routing, intrinsic security, and programmability of forwarding actions, just to name a few. The growing amount and diversified nature of both data and services, particularly the “highly interactive, highly bandwidth-intensive, and highly latency-sensitive” ones, call for fundamentally new and innovative networking principles. In this vein, the design of the control plane as well as the data forwarding mechanisms of the data plane need to be entirely rethought to cope with the dynamics of future networks and services.
The objective of this symposium is to offer a platform for experts in the areas of communications, networking, cloud computing, and the related disciplines to meet and exchange ideas and information on how to re-think Networking Fundamentals in an attempt to provide the required capabilities through innovations that may extend the original fundamentals of what makes out the Internet and also cellular systems today in order to be ready for proliferating highly-demanding 6G services. For this purpose, the symposium’s organizing committee will invite top experts in the general field of networking to share their views with the intention to inspire the community with potential directions of research and innovations.
Depending on the evolution of the pandemic situation, the symposium may be held either virtual or physical in the Greater Helsinki, Finland. Known for its stunning nature – vast green forests and thousands of lakes and hundreds of islands, Finland is also the heart of innovation and technology. Helsinki, the capital of Finland, as well as the huge Metropolitan Area that includes Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen is home to several universities and technology institutes bringing innovation to all levels of daily life.Unless the event is organized virtually, you are invited to explore the eclectic city of Helsinki, relax in its famous saunas and enjoy world’s finest cuisine.
We look forward to welcoming you all at the first edition of the 6G Networking Symposium in Helsinki.