Over the last couple of years, 5G networks have been rapidly deployed across the world, offering unprecedented capabilities. Nevertheless, to meet future expectations, discussions on the next generation cellular networks – commonly referred to as 6G – will start in 3GPP in 2025, targeting deployments in 2030 and beyond. Spectrum flexibility, improved energy efficiency, improved support for reliable and time-critical communication, and beyond-communication services are some examples of areas considered for 6G.

In this talk, an overview of 6G and its key technologies will be given, with focus on time-critical and dependable communication. A smooth evolution from 5G to 6G is essential – introducing 6G should be as smooth as introducing a new release of 5G – and solutions fo this will be discussed.

Stefan Parkvall is currently a Senior Expert at Ericsson Research working with research on 6G and future radio access. He is one of the key persons in the development of HSPA, LTE and NR radio access and has been deeply involved in 3GPP standardization for many years. Dr Parkvall is a fellow of the IEEE, served as an IEEE Distinguished lecturer 2011-2012, holds numerous patents in the area of cellular communication, and is co-author of several popular books such as “5G NR – The Next Generation Wireless Access”. In 2005, he received the Ericsson “Inventor of the Year” award, in 2009 the Swedish government’s Major Technical Award for his contributions to the success of HSPA, and in 2014 he and colleagues at Ericsson was one of three finalists for the European Inventor Award for their contributions to LTE. Dr Parkvall received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in 1996. His previous positions include assistant professor in communication theory at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, and a visiting researcher at University of California, San Diego, USA.

Next generation cellular networks such as 5G and 6G promise to support emerging applications such as enhanced mobile broadband, mission critical applications for the first responder, remote surgery, and industrial IOT among others. While Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networking open up the door for programmable networks and rapid service creation, these also offer both security opportunities, and introduces additional challenges and complexities. The talk focuses on various security challenges and opportunities introduced by 5G enablers, namely hypervisor, virtualization, SDN controller, orchestration, network slicing, Open RAN, edge cloud, and open source. This talk introduces threat taxonomy for 5G security from an end-to-end system perspective including, interfaces, protocols, potential threats introduced by these enablers, and associated mitigation techniques. Additionally, this talk highlights how AI/ML can help enhance security features of these networks and elaborates some adverse effects of AI/ML. Finally, the talk introduces some of the ongoing activities within various standards communities including open source consortiums, large scale NSF testbeds, and illustrates a few deployment use case scenarios.

Ashutosh Dutta is Chief 5G Strategist and APL Fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Labs, USA. He serves as the director of Doctor of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. In the past, he served as the chair of ECE department of Engineering for Professionals at JHU, Director of Technology Security at AT&T, CTO of Wireless at NIKSUN, Senior Scientist in Telcordia Research, Director of Central Research Facility at Columbia University, and Computer Engineer with TATA Motors. He has authored more than 110 technical papers, one book published by John and Wiley, and 5 book chapters, and has 31 issued patents. Ashutosh is recipient of IEEE MGA’s 2009 Leadership Award, IEEE-USA’s 2010 Professional Leadership Award, 2022 IEEE-USA George F. McClure Citation of Honor and 2022 IEEE North American Region Exceptional Service Award. Ashutosh served as Member-At-Large for IEEE Communications Society for 2020-2025 and Distinguished Lecturer from 2018-2021. He co-founded the IEEE STEM conference (ISEC) in 2011 and has served its co-chair since then. Ashutosh currently serves as the Chair for IEEE Industry Connection’s O-RAN activities and 6G. As the Founding co-chair of IEEE Future Networks he led technology roadmap, publications, standardization, testbed, education, industry engagement, conferences and workshops in the area of 5G and 6G, while keeping a focus on humanitarian needs. Ashutosh is a Distinguished Alumnus of NIT Rourkela with a BS in Electrical Engineering, MS in Computer Science from NJIT, and a Ph.D. in EE from Columbia University. Ashutosh is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Distinguished member.