The largest academic event related to 6G mobile communications was held, attended by all of the country's mobile communications experts, and the latest papers in the next-generation communications field were presented and discussed for two days.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), together with the Institute of Information and Communications Technology Planning and Evaluation (IITP) and the Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences, held the '6G Communication Symposium (S6GC),' an international academic event, at the Jeju Ramada Plaza Hotel for two days from the 16th.

S6GC is a place to present major results such as the Ministry of Science and ICT's next-generation network (6G) industrial technology development project status and 6G core technologies discovered from existing academia- and research-led national projects, along with academic exchanges in all areas of 6G technology.

This symposium was held as a special track within the 'ICTC 2024' international communications conference hosted by the Korea Institute of Information and Communications Sciences, and a total of 115 papers and presentations were given.

On the morning of the 16th, the '6G Radio and Components' session and the '6G Non-Terrestrial Network' session were held in parallel, and the official opening session was held in the afternoon.

Also, Professor Melike Erol-Kantarci of the University of Ottawa in Canada and Nokia Bell in the USDragan Samardzija, Lab Director, gave a keynote speech on 6G technology.

On the 17th, various presentations were held, including the '6G Source Technology Festival' session hosted by ETRI, the 'Wireless Communication Technology in Preparation for 6G', '6G Commercialization Research and Development' session, '6G Wireless Access Network' session, '6G Mobile Core Session' and two poster sessions hosted by IITP.

The '6G Source Technology Festival' was first held in 2022 to emphasize the importance of securing 6G source technology, and this is the second event.

Among the numerous 6G source technologies proposed by researchers at ETRI and joint/commissioned research institutes, one best technology and three excellent technologies were selected after approximately two months of review.

The grand prize at this year's festival went to ETRI's Hong Seung-woo, a senior researcher who proposed 'Performance-tailored programmable terminal network technology to support ultra-realistic and high-precision applications.'

The Excellence Award went to a technology proposed by ETRI Senior Researcher Kang Hyeon-sik, Researcher Jo Won-cheol, and Korea University PhD candidate Seong Jae-hyeop (advised by Professor Shin Won-jae).

ETRI’s Baek Yong-sun, head of the Stereoscopic Communication Research Lab, said, “This S6GC academic event went beyond a simple technology exchange event and became a strategic discussion venue to set the direction of Korea’s 6G research and development and seek ways to cooperate for innovation.”

Meanwhile, ETRI is conducting research and development on △6G Upper-mid band E-MIMO system technology, △AI-Native 6G wireless access network and mobile core technology, and △6G wired and wireless core standardization technology with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT and IITP.