Setting the Stage for the 6G Era

Wrapping up the HKIAS Distinguished Lecture Series on Electronics and  Photonics was Professor Chi Hou Chan, the Chair Professor of the Department of  Electrical Engineering (EE) at the City University of Hong Kong (CityU). He delivered the last online talk of the Series titled “Are we ready for 6G” on 22 April 2022. Over 500 scholars,  scientists in THz research, and students joined the virtual event. 

While the frequency spectrum allocated to the 5th generation (5G) wireless communications have not been fully utilized, research groups worldwide are already juggling their positions for 6G, in which frequencies 100 GHz to 3 THz are promising. Imaging, sensing, and spectroscopy will also be essential applications in 6G.  

According to Professor Chi Hou Chan, we are expected 6G to have a high data rate, devices free form battery charging, sub-millimetre second latency, massive connectivity, etc. More importantly, it is a system integration of air space, sea and ground communications. 

In the talk, Professor Chan summarised his THz research on antennas, integrated circuits,  and imaging in the past five years, supported by a Theme-Based Research Scheme funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.  

In addition, he discussed how system-level research could lead to new ideas and directions,  setting the stage for the 6G era. 

Professor Kwai Man Luk, Chair Professor of the EE, working closely with Professor Chan on the antennas project at the State Key Laboratory of Terahertz and Millimeter Waves,  was the moderator. 

Professor Chan joined CityU in 1998; currently, he is the Director of the SKLTMW. Besides working in computational electromagnetics for 30 years, he has extended his research interest to antennas, microwave and millimetre-wave components and systems, and more recently to terahertz science and engineering. 

Elected a Fellow of IEEE in 2002, Professor Chan received the IEEE Antennas and  Propagation Society Harrington-Mittra Computational Electromagnetics Award in 2019. He also received the 2019 Distinguished Alumni Award from the Electrical and Computer  Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

This lecture is supported in part by the Kwang Hua Educational Foundation.

For more information about the lecture, please click here. 

–END— 

About Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study (HKIAS)

The Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study (HKIAS), which was launched on 22  November 2015, aspires to be an international centre of excellence for the advancement of technology and innovation by bringing together an interdisciplinary team of world-renowned scholars and researchers, including Nobel laureates and academicians, to contribute to the solutions of pressing real-world problems. Conferences, symposiums, workshops, and lectures will be organized to facilitate the exchange of ideas among academic communities locally, regionally and internationally. 

About the HKIAS Distinguished Lecture Series on Electronics and Photonics

HKIAS Distinguished Lecture Series on Electronics and Photonics is another lecture series of excellence initiated by HKIAS in 2022. This series is committed to showcasing top-notch research and developing innovative applications at various levels from electronic/photonic materials to devices and systems. The five lectures focus on discussing the latest advances in electronics and photonics for computing systems, covering topics from Nanotechnology and Nano devices, Antenna Design, Photonics, Power Electronics and Systems, Terahertz and Millimeter Waves, Wireless Communications, etc.