Evaluating Radio Interfaces Toward 6G: What’s New and What’s Different

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has set forth the timetable to develop the 6th generation (6G) terrestrial networks, namely, the International Mobile Telecommunications towards 2030 and beyond (IMT-2030). Due to the fact that 6G is envisaged to support a much wider variety of usage scenarios and use cases, evaluations of candidate 6G radio interface technologies (RITs) are likely to be more challenging than those for the previous generation. Novel technical performance requirements (TPRs) as well as proper evaluation methodologies are essential to be defined to characterize the advanced capabilities of 6G. In this article, comprehensive investigations of potential new 6G TPRs as well as evaluation methodologies are provided.