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Intel Joins Hexa-X Initiative to Develop 6G Wireless Technologies

Asha_Keddy
Employee
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With 5G dominating the global conversation around wireless, it’s often easy to lose sight of future investment in innovation. After all, 5G is still just exiting “childhood” in terms of its ubiquity and impact on both consumers and businesses. But given the time and resources required to build the next generation of any technology, it’s important that we as an industry also focus on what needs to happen next.

Even as 5G continues to transform businesses and enable new use cases, 6G promises to open up even more new vistas, with human intelligence augmented by being seamlessly intertwined with network and digital technologies. 6G’s advances will help humans better understand our world and thus help to take action to resolve issues as varied as healthcare, education, sustainability, and more.

This is why as part of our continued focus on advanced wireless, Intel has joined Hexa-X, the EU Flagship research project helping to build the foundation for 6G wireless technologies. While 5G promises to remake multiple industries and the lives of individuals around the world, 6G looks to have a similar impact in terms of scope. The magnitude of this type of technological change requires much more than a single entity, but an entire ecosystem focused on delivering the innovations required to make that big step a reality. Hexa-X was born with this goal in mind.

The Hexa-X project’s vision is to connect human, physical, and digital worlds with a fabric of 6G key enablers. Intel is part of this European 6G Research Flagship effort, together with leading global organizations. Hexa-X plans on developing key technology enablers in the areas of:

  • Fundamentally new radio access technologies at high frequencies and high-resolution localization and sensing;

  • Connected intelligence through AI-driven air interface and governance for future networks, and

  • 6G architectural enablers for network disaggregation and dynamic dependability.


In addition to its leadership in 5G, Intel aims to share its expertise on Compute, Data, AI and Edge to the project while leveraging the confluence of computation, communication and AI/ML in next-generation networks.

Intel holds two leadership roles within the project, which includes both leading the work on AI-driven communication and computation co-design as well as serving as the Innovation Manager of the project.  The goal is to understand both market and technical challenges and to bridge project research achievements ensuring successful deployments in the real world. Intel is also involved in several project work areas, including system requirements and architecture components for AI/ML-powered, up to THz-capable and extreme Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC), along with related aspects in data security, privacy and trust.

Beginning on January 1, 2021, Hexa-X is a 2.5-year project within the EU's Horizon 2020 ICT-52 program, and is a consortium of 25 key players from adjacent industries and academia. Hexa-X is a broad collaborative initiative to frame the 6G research agenda and lay the groundwork for a long-term investment in future wireless network technology.

Hexa-X has identified six research challenges that need to be addressed to lay the technical foundation for 6G wireless systems:

  • Connecting intelligence: AI/Machine Learning (ML) technologies need to be a vital and trusted tool for significantly improved efficiency and service experience, serving humans

  • Network of networks: multiple types of resources need to be aggregated to create a digital ecosystem that grows more and more capable, intelligent, and heterogeneous, eventually creating a single network of networks

  • Sustainability: energy-optimized digital infrastructure for a reduced global ICT environmental footprint, as well as delivering effective and sustainable digitization tools for global industry, society and policymakers

  • Global service coverage: efficient and affordable solutions for global service coverage, connecting remote places

  • Extreme experience: extreme bitrates, extremely low (imperceptible) latencies, seemingly infinite capacity, and precision localization and sensing

  • Trustworthiness: ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of communications and delivering data privacy, operational resilience and security


While the world is just beginning to reap the benefits of 5G innovation, it is imperative that we, as an industry, continue to invest in, explore, and advance wireless technology as a whole. Already a critical element in the fabric of business and society, mobility’s importance will only continue to grow as we address issues of global importance, including sustainability, and digital transformation. 6G promises to advance each of those, as well as give us the ability to augment human intelligence itself.
About the Author
Asha Keddy has 25+ years of experience at Intel as a patent-holding engineer and technology futurist building enterprise systems and defining policies that transform working and living environments. Ms. Keddy continues to serve as a pivotal force at Intel in the creation of the multi-trillion dollar 5G market opportunity. In this role, she has executed incubation efforts, product development, industry forums, standards creation, ecosystem enablement, and policy governance. Building on her experience as Intel’s 5G exec sponsor, she currently serves as Corporate Vice President and General Manager for Intel’s Next Generation Systems & Standards business unit. Keddy leads global efforts to build the next generation of distributed intelligence and advanced connectivity including 6G, the latest class of Wi-Fi technology, and more, thus empowering the creation of transformative and sustainable opportunities beyond Intel’s current playbook. Keddy is a highly networked industry thought leader, and a global spokesperson providing insights to government agencies, the media, analysts, academia, and investors. She has served as a representative before Congress and international government agencies including testimonies to the senate on 5G. Keddy helped establish Intel as a leader within key wireless, industrial and edge standards bodies, and multiple industry fora, such as the 3GPP, IEEE, Wi-Fi Alliance, ETSI and Open-RAN. Keddy is a founder and advisor to Innovative Optical Wireless Network (IOWN GF) and has served or serves as long time director on the board of directors of Wi-Fi Alliance, 5G Americas, and CTIA. In April 2022, she joined Smith Micro Software (SMSI)’s as an independent Board Director. Keddy holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from Clemson University and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai. She is an alumna of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business as part of the Intel Executive Accelerator Program. She is an avid advocate for women and minorities in technology. Residing in Portland, Oregon, Asha is an avid enthusiast for sustainability and the great outdoors. She enjoys kayaking, hiking, and spending time in nature with her family.