6G Could Pull Double Duty to Monitor Climate Change
The sixth generation of wireless cellular networks (6G, circa 2030) is expected not just to increase the availability, reliability, and speed of wireless networks but also serve as a major sensing infrastructure. In a recent interview by IEEE Spectrum, Josep Jornet, professor of electrical and computer engineering and associate director of the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things, discusses how 6G networks operating at terahertz frequencies (between 100 GHz and 10 THz) can be leveraged to distributedly monitor at a massive scale the presence of different gases critical to understanding and predicting climate change. The collaborative research between Northeastern University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on “Climate Change Sensing through Terahertz Communication Infrastructure: A Disruptive Application of 6G Networks” was published in IEEE Network.