Toward a 6G AI-Native Air Interface
This paper addresses the fundamental question of how AI can define the 6G air interface, which is a significant problem for the future of cellular communication system design.
The paper proposes a vision for a 6G air interface where AI plays a defining role in its design. This AI-native approach aims to optimize communication schemes across diverse hardware, radio environments, and applications.
Each generation of cellular communication systems is marked by a defining disruptive technology of its time, such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) for 4G or Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) for 5G. Since artificial intelligence (AI) is the defining technology of our time, it is natural to ask what role it could play for 6G. While it is clear that 6G must cater to the needs of large distributed learning systems, it is less certain if AI will play a defining role in the design of 6G itself. The goal of this article is to paint a vision of a new air interface which is partially designed by AI to enable optimized communication schemes for any hardware, radio environment, and application.