Euronaval 2022: Airbus and Rohde & Schwarz eye naval benefits of future 6G communications
Airbus Defence and Space and Rohde & Schwarz aim to bring 6G secure communications to the naval domain. (Photo: Rohde & Schwarz)
6G secure communications remain at a nascent stage but Airbus and Rohde & Schwarz aim to bring the benefits to navies.
Airbus Defence and Space and Rohde & Schwarz are cooperating ‘to bring integrated sixth-generation [6G] secure communications and electronic support solutions to navies’, the two companies announced on 19 October during Euronaval 2022 in Paris.
6G defence technologies ‘will revolutionise military secure communications and cooperative intelligence. This will enable the navy to better exploit the huge amount of information collected and distributed’, said Hansjörg Herrbold, VP of secure communications at Rohde & Schwarz.
With 6G, both companies expect that navies would benefit from extremely low latency communications of one microsecond, or 1,000 times faster than one millisecond. 6G-enabled networks would also be able to operate at higher frequencies than 5G.
Mobile edge computing with AI capabilities will be built into all 6G networks, whereas it must be added to existing 5G networks.
However, 6G is not yet ready for the field. Some commercial vendors are devoting R&D funds to the technology but industry and government specifications for 6G network-enabled solutions remain undefined.
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