The latest developments and recent progress on the key technologies enabling next-generation 6G mobile networks Toward 6G: A New Era of Convergence offers an up-to-date guide to the emerging 6G vision by describing new human-centric services made possible by combinations of mobile robots, avatars, and smartphones, which will be increasingly replaced with wearable displays and haptic interfaces that provide immersive extended reality (XR) experiences. The authors—noted experts on the topic—include a review of their work and information on the recent progress on the Tactile Internet and multi-sensory haptic communications. The book highlights decentralized edge computing in particular via Ethereum blockchain technologies, most notably the so-called decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for crowdsourcing of human skills to solve problems that machines (such as autonomous artificial intelligence agents and robots) alone cannot solve well. The book also contains a review of the most recent and ongoing work on XR (including virtual/augmented/mixed reality). Specifically, the book describes the implications of the transition from the current gadgets-based Internet to a future Internet that is evolving from bearables (such as smartphones), moves towards wearables (for example Amazon's recently launched voice-controlled Echo Loop ring, glasses, and earbuds), and then finally progresses to nearables with embedded computing technologies and intelligent provisioning mechanisms for the delivery of human-intended services, including sixth-sense perceptions, in a 6G post-smartphone era. This important text: Offers a review of the 6G network architectures and key enabling technologies Explains why 6G should not be a mere exploration of more spectrum at high-frequency bands, but rather a convergence of upcoming technological trends Describes the Tactile Internet's human-in-the-loop centric design principles and haptic communications models Includes analytical frameworks to estimate the fluid orchestration of human + machine co-activities across unified communication network infrastructures Explores the performance gains of cooperative computation offloading with communications and computation limitations in both fronthaul and backhaul Written for students, network researchers, professionals, engineers, and practitioners, Toward 6G: A New Era of Convergence explores the most recent advances on the key technologies enabling next-generation 6G mobile networks, with an emphasis on their seamless convergence.

Since the launch of Second-Generation Networks (2G), planning for each future mobile service was initiated many years before its commercial launch. In 2019, 5G Networks begun to be deployed commercially after almost ten years of planning. Similarly, the race for the 6G wireless networks that will be operational in 2030 has already started. To fulfill its potential in the upcoming decade, 6G will undoubtedly require an architectural orchestration based on the amalgamation of existing solutions and innovative technologies. The book will begin by evaluating the state of the art of all current mobile generations' while looking into their core building blocks. 6G implementation will require fundamental support from Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning on the network's edge and core, including a new Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum. The 6G use cases will require advanced techniques for enabling the future wireless network to be human-centric, ensuring enhanced quality of experience (QoE) for most of its applications. The concept of Human Bond Communication Beyond 2050 (Knowledge Home) and Communication, Navigation, Sensing, and Services (CONASENSE) will also profit from future wireless communication. Terahertz domains will exploit the ultra-Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output Antennas (UM-MIMO) technologies to support Terabits' data throughputs.Moreover, optical wireless communications (OWC) will also come into play to support indoor and outdoor high-data rates. Further expansion of 6G core entities will support the novel concept of Society 5.0. Quantum computing processing and communications is also likely to be added into the 6G ecosystem with security managed by blockchain orchestration for a robust network.

This book is the world’s first book on 6G Mobile Wireless Networks that aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of key drivers, use cases, research requirements, challenges and open issues that are expected to drive 6G research. In this book, we have invited world-renowned experts from industry and academia to share their thoughts on different aspects of 6G research. Specifically, this book covers the following topics: 6G Use Cases, Requirements, Metrics and Enabling Technologies, PHY Technologies for 6G Wireless, Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface for 6G Wireless Networks, Millimeter-wave and Terahertz Spectrum for 6G Wireless, Challenges in Transport Layer for Tbit/s Communications, High-capacity Backhaul Connectivity for 6G Wireless, Cloud Native Approach for 6G Wireless Networks, Machine Type Communications in 6G, Edge Intelligence and Pervasive AI in 6G, Blockchain: Foundations and Role in 6G, Role of Open-source Platforms in 6G, and Quantum Computing and 6G Wireless. The overarching aim of this book is to explore the evolution from current 5G networks towards the future 6G networks from a service, air interface and network perspective, thereby laying out a vision for 6G networks. This book not only discusses the potential 6G use cases, requirements, metrics and enabling technologies, but also discusses the emerging technologies and topics such as 6G PHY technologies, reconfigurable intelligent surface, millimeter-wave and THz communications, visible light communications, transport layer for Tbit/s communications, high-capacity backhaul connectivity, cloud native approach, machine-type communications, edge intelligence and pervasive AI, network security and blockchain, and the role of open-source platform in 6G. This book provides a systematic treatment of the state-of-the-art in these emerging topics and their role in supporting a wide variety of verticals in the future. As such, it provides a comprehensive overview of the expected applications of 6G with a detailed discussion of their requirements and possible enabling technologies. This book also outlines the possible challenges and research directions to facilitate the future research and development of 6G mobile wireless networks.

Blockchain technology is a powerful, cost-effective method for network security. Essentially, it is a decentralized ledger for storing all committed transactions in trustless environments by integrating several core technologies such as cryptographic hash, digital signature and distributed consensus mechanisms.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of blockchain for 6G-enabled network-based applications. Following the key services of blockchain technology, this book will be instrumental to ideate and understand the necessities, challenges, and various case studies of different 6G-based applications. The emphasis is on understanding the contributions of blockchain technology in 6G-enabled applications, and its aim is to give insights into evolution, research directions, challenges, and the ways to empower 6G applications through blockchain. The book consistently emphasizes the missing connection between blockchain and 6G-enabled network applications. The entire ecosystem between these two futuristic technologies is explained in a comprehensive manner. The book constitutes a one-stop guide to students, researchers, and industry professionals. The book progresses from a general introduction toward more technical aspects while remaining easy to understand throughout. Comprehensive elaboration of material is supplemented with examples and diagrams, followed by easily understandable approaches with regard to technical information given thereon. Blockchain and its applications in 6G-enabled applications can drive many powerful solutions to real-world technical, scientific, and social problems. This book presents the most recent and exciting advances in blockchain for 6G-enabled network applications. Overall, this book is a complete outlet and is designed exclusively for professionals, scientists, technologists, developers, designers, and researchers in network technologies around blockchain integration with IoT, blockchain technology, information technology, and 6G-enabled industrial applications. Secondary readers include professionals involved in policy making and administration, security of public data and law, network policy developers, blockchain technology experts, regulators, and decision makers in government administrations.

This open access book, authored by a world-leading researcher in this field, describes fundamentals of dynamic spectrum management, provides a systematic overview on the enabling technologies covering cognitive radio, blockchain, and artificial intelligence, and offers valuable guidance for designing advanced wireless communications systems. This book is intended for a broad range of readers, including students and professionals in this field, as well as radio spectrum policy makers.

The threat landscape is evolving with tremendous speed. We are facing an extremely fast-growing attack surface with a diversity of attack vectors, a clear asymmetry between attackers and defenders, billions of connected IoT devices, mostly reactive detection and mitigation approaches, and finally big data challenges. The clear asymmetry of attacks and the enormous amount of data are additional arguments to make it necessary to rethink cybersecurity approaches in terms of reducing the attack surface, to make the attack surface dynamic, to automate the detection, risk assessment, and mitigation, and to investigate the prediction and prevention of attacks with the utilization of emerging technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning. This book contains eleven chapters dealing with different Cybersecurity Issues in Emerging Technologies. The issues that are discussed and analyzed include smart connected cars, unmanned ships, 5G/6G connectivity, blockchain, agile incident response, hardware assisted security, ransomware attacks, hybrid threats and cyber skills gap. Both theoretical analysis and experimental evaluation of state-of-the-art techniques are presented and discussed. Prospective readers can be benefitted in understanding the future implications of novel technologies and proposed security solutions and techniques. Graduate and postgraduate students, research scholars, academics, cybersecurity professionals, and business leaders will find this book useful, which is planned to enlighten both beginners and experienced readers.

SECURITY AND PRIVACY VISION IN 6G Prepare for the future of mobile communication with this comprehensive study 6G is the next frontier in mobile communication, with development of 6G standards slated to begin as early as 2026. As telecommunications networks become faster and more intelligent, security and privacy concerns are critical. In an increasingly connected world, there is an urgent need for user data to be safeguarded and system security enhanced against a new generation of threats. Security and Privacy Vision in 6G provides a comprehensive survey of these threats and the emerging techniques for safeguarding against them. It includes mechanisms for prediction, detection, mitigation, and prevention, such that threats to privacy and security can be forestalled at any stage. Fully engaged with proposed 6G architectures, it is an essential resource for mobile communications professionals looking for a head start on the technology of the future. Security and Privacy Vision in 6G readers will also find: Detailed coverage of topics including edge intelligence and cloudification, industrial automation, collaborative robots, and more Treatment balancing the practical and the theoretical An editorial team with decades of international network technology experience in both industry and academia Security and Privacy Vision in 6G is a vital reference for network security professionals and for postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students in mobile communications and network security-related fields.

This book highlights future research directions and latent solutions by integrating AI and Blockchain 6G networks, comprising computation efficiency, algorithms robustness, hardware development and energy management. This book brings together leading researchers in Academia and industry from diverse backgrounds to deliver to the technical community an outline of emerging technologies, advanced architectures, challenges, open issues and future directions of 6G networks. This book is written for researchers, professionals and students to learn about the integration of technologies such as AI and Blockchain into 6G network and communications. This book addresses the topics such as consensus protocol, architecture, intelligent dynamic resource management, security and privacy in 6G to integrate AI and Blockchain and new real-time application with further research opportunities.

So-called Intent-Based Networking (IBN) is founded on well-known SDN (Software-Defined Networking) and represents one of the most important emerging network infrastructure opportunities. The IBN is the beginning of a new era in the history of networking, where the network itself translates business intentions into appropriate network configurations for all devices. This minimizes manual effort, provides an additional layer of network monitoring, and provides the ability to perform network analytics and take full advantage of machine learning. The centralized, software-defined solution provides process automation and proactive problem solving as well as centralized management of the network infrastructure. With software-based network management, many operations can be performed automatically using intelligent control algorithms (artificial intelligence and machine learning). As a result, network operation costs, application response times and energy consumption are reduced, network reliability and performance are improved, network security and flexibility are enhanced. This will be a benefit for existing networks as well as evolved LTE-based mobile networks, emerging Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud systems, and soon for the future 5G/6G networks. The future networks will reach a whole new level of self-awareness, self-configuration, self-optimization, self-recovery and self-protection. This volume consists of 28 chapters, based on recent research on IBN.The volume is a collection of the most important research for the future intent-based networking deployment provided by different groups of researchers from Ukraine, Germany, Slovak Republic, Switzerland, South Korea, China, Czech Republic, Poland, Brazil, Belarus and Israel. The authors of the chapters from this collection present in depth extended research results in their scientific fields.The presented contents are highly interesting while still being rather practically oriented and straightforward to understand. Herewith we would like to wish all our readers a lot of inspiration by studying of the volume!