Building the Foundations of Resilient 6G Connectivity
At an ICT Breakfast at the University of Oulu, I shared an update on the progress of the Wireless Connectivity research area of the 6G Flagship. This area, known as SRA1, is led by Professor Markku Juntti, with me as the coordinator. It accounts for nearly half of the Flagship’s total activity and involves contributions from more than 200 researchers. With the current programme approaching its conclusion in mid-2026, this is an ideal moment to reflect on our progress and look ahead to what comes next.
The structure of our research
The Wireless Connectivity research area at the 6G Flagship is divided into three main themes. The first, Advanced Networking Technologies, looks at how 6G will evolve from a network of networks to become a flexibly-deployable service of services. The second, Wireless Broadband Access, focuses on developing new methods to achieve high throughput with reduced energy consumption and complexity. The third, Massive Wireless Automation, explores how to connect billions of intelligent devices in sustainable and reliable ways.
Each of these themes has produced new insights in the past year. Here’s a brief look at some of the ideas currently shaping our work.
Advanced networking technologies
In Theme A, led by Professor Mika Ylianttila, our teams are studying how to make 6G networks more autonomous, distributed, and secure. One focus is secure edge intelligence. This involves distributing computation and learning across the cloud, edge, and fog layers, while preserving both privacy and efficiency.
The balance between the layers is delicate. Centralised clouds are powerful but introduce latency. The edge and fog computing bring the service closer to users, but with limited resources. Our research shows that privacy-preserving approaches, such as homomorphic encryption or multi-party learning, can enable secure collaboration across these layers without compromising performance.
We are also investigating security orchestration, a coordinated way to predict and repel cyber-attacks, and functional architectures for industrial IoT networks, where tasks such as traffic prediction and resource management can be distributed efficiently across the network.
Wireless broadband access
Theme B, led by Professor Nandana Rajatheva, focuses on pushing the physical limits of wireless communication. One promising line of work is low-resolution Massive MIMO. Large antenna arrays can deliver enormous data rates, but at high energy and hardware cost. By simplifying the analogue-to-digital converters — even to a one-bit resolution — our researchers have shown that it is possible to maintain good performance while dramatically improving energy efficiency.
We are also exploring extreme and holographic MIMO, where very large antenna surfaces and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) are used to shape and redirect radio signals. These techniques could enable precise beamforming and new levels of spatial accuracy, although the complexity of the hardware and signal processing remains a significant challenge.
Alongside these developments, our teams are examining new AI-enabled air-interface designs and dynamic spectrum-access methods to make future broadband systems more flexible, more sustainable, and more efficient.
Massive wireless automation
Theme C examines the connectivity required for the next wave of the Internet of Things, ranging from small sensors to critical industrial systems – also known as machine type communications (MTC). It is led by Assoc. Professor Hirley Alves.
Energy-neutral IoT, where devices can operate for years or decades without battery replacement, is a major research goal within this thematic area. Several approaches are being developed to achieve this goal. One involves wireless energy transfer, which allows energy to be transmitted over the air, much like data. Another focuses on energy harvesting, where devices capture small amounts of energy from vibration or ambient radio signals. We are also testing intelligent wake-up mechanisms that let nodes sleep most of the time, waking only when needed, and tiny Machine Learning (ML) (lightweight, distributed learning algorithms that can run efficiently on low-power devices) to make large-scale IoT both intelligent and sustainable.
Other research areas in this theme include critical MTC, Ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) and integrating terrestrial networks with satellite networks. Across this theme, the emphasis is on balancing energy use, cost, and reliability.
Toward resilient networks
In our research, one idea is becoming central to defining what 6G and beyond 6G wireless networks will be. Resilience. In the next phase of 6G research, we anticipate that resilience will become as fundamental as speed or capacity.
Reliability and robustness have long been integral to communication design, but resilience takes it a step further. It is about how systems can anticipate, adapt, and recover from disruptions — from unexpected events, as well as known problems. We describe this through four principles: Predict, Pre-empt, Protect, and Progress. Together, they define how a network can sense change, act before failure, withstand shocks, and learn from experience.
The concept extends from the physical layer to the entire system. It includes how networks respond to cyber-attacks, natural disasters, or cascading failures. It includes how they manage increasing environmental and geopolitical uncertainty. In practice, resilience also means combining terrestrial, aerial, and satellite layers into flexible, three-dimensional networks that can support one another when needed.
Our 15th White Paper focuses on resilience
Resilience was the focus of our 15th 6G White Paper, which was released at the 6G Resilience Summit in November 2025. It outlined how wireless connectivity, distributed intelligence, and system design can converge to build more adaptive and sustainable digital infrastructures.
The next phase of the 6G Flagship, whatever its final name, is under planning. It will allow us to build on our current work and expand our research scope while maintaining Finland’s leadership in wireless innovation. Our goal is to integrate technology development more closely with societal resilience and long-term sustainability while enhancing performance and efficiency.
Wireless connectivity has always been about connecting people and systems. The next challenge is ensuring that those systems can continue to serve the societies that depend on them, even in the face of unexpected disruptions, by learning, reacting, and adapting.
Watch the 6G Resilience Summit Playlist on YouTube!
About the author
Strategic Research Area Coordinator