6G Wireless Communication Systems: Applications, Opportunities and Challenges

As the technical specifications of the 5th Generation (5G) wireless communication standard are being wrapped up, there are growing efforts amongst researchers, industrialists and standardisation bodies on the enabling technologies of a 6G standard or the so-called Beyond 5G (B5G) one. Although the 5G standard has presented several benefits, there are still some limitations within it. Such limitations have motivated the setting up of study groups to determine suitable technologies that should operate in the year 2030 and beyond, i.e., after 5G. Consequently, this Special Issue on Future Internet concerning what possibilities lie ahead for a 6G wireless network includes four high-quality research papers (three of which are review papers with over 412 referred sources and one regular research). This editorial piece summarises the major contributions of the articles and the Special Issue, outlining future directions for new research. The 5th Generation (5G) network standard is the latest wireless telecommunication network standard for data transfer from one location to another, which is presently being rolled out globally. In developed countries, non-standalone 5G network examples were deployed in a limited number of cities (e.g., London, Manchester, and Edinburgh in the UK) to learn more about their real-world performances; these were non-standalone because they used the existing 4G network infrastructure. Afterwards, the lessons operators learned from the 5G non-standalone deployments were used to revise and improve the technologies. It is these revised systems that are presently being deployed around the world. It has been said that all the technologies that could not be incorporated into the 5G standard by the end of 2020 will be considered for the Beyond 5G (B5G) network standard [1]. In the literature, the B5G network is also referred to as the 6th Generation (6G) network. This editorial piece summarises th