6G Vision, Value, Use Cases and Technologies from European 6G Flagship project Hexa-X

While 5G is being deployed and the economy and society begin to reap the associated benefits, the research and development community starts to focus on the next, 6th Generation (6G) of wireless communications. This paper presents an approach, rooted in Europe with a potential for worldwide impact, which aggregates the views of expert institutions, both industry and academia. A first contribution of the paper is that it revisits and analyzes the key concurrent initiatives on 6G from around the globe. A second contribution of the paper is that it explains the motivation for the prioritization of six (6) main research challenges, which, in our view, will be key features of 6G: (i) "connecting", in the sense of exploiting and governing, intelligence; (ii) realizing a network of networks, i.e., leveraging on existing networks and investments, while reinventing roles and protocols where needed; (iii) delivering extreme experiences, when/where needed; (iv) (environmental, economic, social) sustainability to address the major challenges of current societies; (v) trustworthiness as an ingrained fundamental design principle; (vi) supporting cost-effective global service coverage. A third contribution is a comprehensive specification of a concrete first-set of use cases for 6G, e.g., massive twinning, cooperative robots, immersive telepresence, and others. Finally, the anticipated evolutions in the radio, network and management/orchestration domains are discussed.