Making Smarter and Faster Mobile Networks: When the Edge Meets AI [Mobile Radio]

The evolution of mobile networks beyond 5G and toward 6G is tightly coupled with increasing demands for new applications, such as extended reality (XR), holographic communications, and a wide range of artificial intelligence (AI)-related applications for content generation, chatbot interactions, and AI-based assistance. The huge data volumes and strict latency and data rate requirements of most of these new applications bring important challenges in the way how future networks will have to be deployed and operated. This will demand the efficient integration and orchestration of advanced communication and computing infrastructures spanning different domains from the cloud down to the edge of the network, including the radio access network (RAN). This issue’s “Mobile Radio” column intends to provide further insights into these visions by summarizing some of the most recent announcements made by different stakeholders, with the main focus on how AI can be deployed at the edge both for providing new applications and for enhancing the operation of the network across different segments.