Towards the 6G System Architecture: Learnings from IEEE 1930.1 and IEEE 2061

Mobile communications technology has seen significant evolution in the last few decades. The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 5th Generation System (5GS) is the latest addition to this continually advancing domain. While the 3GPP 5GS is being deployed today, the technological evolution continues with research, development and standardization activities towards the next generation mobile communications system. Every generation of mobile technology makes enhancements to radio access capabilities as well as network architecture. A few architectural innovations brought in by the 5GS are control and user plane separation, the existence of a converged core and service-based architecture. Even though the 5GS has undertaken many architectural improvements, it has certain limitations too, such as, complexity of features like dual-connectivity, or uniform handling of use cases with limited consideration for their diversity or complex interaction between access and the core, which may not be desirable for use cases like captive networks, Internet of Things (IoT) and rural broadband scenario. In this article, we discuss a few novel design concepts proposed as part of two recently published IEEE standards, namely, IEEE 1930.1 and 2061. These concepts have the potential to address some limitations of the 5G network architecture and play an important role in future mobile communication networks. We also propose a few design guidelines for the upcoming 6th Generation network architecture.