It is no surprise that companies such as operators (AT&T, BT, SKT), suppliers (Ericsson, Nokia), and measurement folks (Keysight, R&S) have made several 6G announcements in the past years. It is interesting to see where their research is going – but it is equally intriguing when a player from another field makes their intentions public.
Google has recently posted a job opening for a 5G and 6G standardisation firmware engineer in Shanghai, China. More specifically, the giant tech wants to investigate how it can leverage future networks for its Pixel smartphones.
“We’re looking for engineers who bring fresh ideas from all areas, including information retrieval, distributed computing, large-scale system design, networking and data storage, security, natural language processing, UI design and mobile,” the job post reads. “The list goes on and is growing every day.”
Among the job responsibilities are to:
- Conduct research on the physical layer for future cellular technologies (5G and 6G)
- Generate innovative ideas for cellular technologies
- Prepare 3GPP meeting contribution documents to promote ideas into 5G/6G standards
Also, applicants must have experience with 3GPP standardisation on 4G and 5G/5G-Advanced and have attended and prepared documents for 3GPP RAN1 or RAN2 meetings.
6G Sensing
Another hint about what companies are doing regarding 6G research comes from car manufacturer Volvo. It has published a job opening for an industrial PhD student in wireless communications and sensing.
The Swedish giant is looking for a professional to join its Research Competence Center WiTECH, a research initiative managed by Chalmers University.
“As part of a collaborative project with industry partners and academic supervisors, the candidate will be responsible for developing joint communication, sensing, and localisation systems to support future use cases in the next decade,” the post reads.
The specific research questions will be decided together with Chalmers University. Still, areas of interest include distributed antenna systems, channel models, radar waveforms, positioning integrity, wireless resource allocation, signal processing, and sensor fusion.
According to the company, the candidate “will gain practical experience in the field of 6G for the automotive sector, with applications in autonomous driving and the V2X eco-system.”
As the 6G research evolves, the industry will likely see more of these examples. Until plans take actual shape, we will keep reading moves between the lines.
Featured image by Shawn Collins/Flickr
