Emerging applications such as Internet of Everything, Holographic Telepresence, collaborative robots, and space and deep-sea tourism are already highlighting the limitations of existing fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks. These limitations are in terms of data-rate, latency, reliability, availability, processing, connection density and global coverage, spanning over ground, underwater and space. The sixth-generation (6G) of mobile networks are expected to burgeon in the coming decade to address these limitations. The development of 6G vision, applications, technologies and standards has already become a popular research theme in academia and the industry. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of the current developments towards 6G. We highlight the societal and technological trends that initiate the drive towards 6G. Emerging applications to realize the demands raised by 6G driving trends are discussed subsequently. We also elaborate the requirements that are necessary to realize the 6G applications. Then we present the key enabling technologies in detail. We also outline current research projects and activities including standardization efforts towards the development of 6G. Finally, we summarize lessons learned from state-of-the-art research and discuss technical challenges that would shed a new light on future research directions towards 6G.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world in an unexpected manner. The human race is battling against the pandemic while schools, universities, industries, hospitals and governments are seeking new methods and technologies to seamlessly continue their usual operations. In response, this paper presents how 5G and IoT (Internet of Things) related technologies can be efficiently utilized and developed to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Several use-cases on how 5G and IoT can be enablers to provide innovative solutions in the areas of telehealth, contact tracing, education, retail and supply chains, e-government/ remote office/ information sharing, smart manufacturing and factory automation, e-tourism and entertainment are presented along with their technical requirements and challenges. It is envisaged that the proposed solutions will be instrumental to facilitate the usual lifestyle, work and other dayto-day activities of humans in the post-pandemic world.

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The ever-growing smart applications will expand the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem to connect over 75 billion devices by 2025. IoT ecosystems comprise sensors that act as data suppliers and applications where monetary transactions are required to compensate the data producers. This signifies the importance of IoT payments and marketplaces to facilitate micro-transactions of billions of connected devices in the IoT ecosystem, which is heterogeneous, decentralized, and diverse. However, realizing such an ecosystem raises multiple challenges such as overcoming poor inter-operability, resource constraints, and security and privacy vulnerabilities of IoT devices and platforms. Blockchain is a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) that can be identified as a potential solution to overcome the challenges in realizing IoT payments and marketplaces. This is due to the characteristics of blockchain such as decentralization, traceability, immutability, and non-repudiation. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on blockchainbased IoT payments and marketplaces. This paper provides a brief introduction to the concepts of IoT payments and IoT marketplaces. Then the technical challenges involved in realizing IoT payment and marketplaces are discussed by highlighting the blockchain-based solutions. Furthermore, blockchain-based smart applications which use IoT marketplace and IoT payment concepts are presented marking the role of blockchain in each of the application. Subsequently, the paper discussed the integration challenges while also highlighting possible solutions. It is envisaged that this paper would shed light on the development of blockchain-based solutions to realize IoT payments and marketplaces.

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