The WEAF Mnecosystem: a perspective of MEMS/NEMS technologies as pillars of future 6G, tactile internet and super-IoT

Review and Perspectives of Micro/Nano Technologies as Key-Enablers of 6G

“…Section 2 develops a comprehensive insight of 6G KPIs and KETs, reasoning in terms of Paradigm Shifts (PSs). Section 3 discusses the concept of HW-SW divide, introduced in [6], [7], capitalizing on detailed description. Section 4 summarizes the WEAF Mnecosystem concept, upon which reformulation of HW concept is based.…”

“…Bearing this in mind, unprecedented design and development strategies must be architected, to overcome the HW-SW divide limitations. The authors already suggested in [7] that pursuing a trend to the increase of HW-SW separation and symmetry could be a key in solving the problem.…”

“…The resulting scenario is addressed as the WEAF Mnecosystem, i.e. Water, Earth, Air, Fire Micro and Nano technologies Ecosystem, already introduced by the authors in [7], [103]. Its main features are just briefly recalled in this section, for the sake of consistency with the discussion that will be developed in the next pages.…”

“…As discussed in [7], [103], Water-like HW is hinged around backbone trends, like functional adaptivity, self-evolution and ubiquity, triggered by the ease, typical of Micro/Nano technologies, of realizing orthogonal and redundant devices, within the same chip and in a monolithic fashion. Moreover, Water physical devices also implement interaction with features typical of SW, by means of the so-called trends of Evaporation and Condensation, i.e., Water-Air and Air-Water transition, respectively.…”

“…Wrapping together all these challenges weighting on the shoulders of 6G, this work develops a discussion gravitating around the field of Hardware (HW) technologies. As already anticipated by the authors in [6], [7], turning 6G visions into reality will require adoption of unprecedented strategies in development of Hardware-Software (HW-SW) systems, leveraging increased functional abstraction of HW, leading to its partial reconceptualization. A pivotal role for Microtechnologies and Nanotechnologies, intended as devices, systems (Micro/NanoElectroMechanical-Systems -MEMS/NEMS) and materials, is envisioned in the 6G scenario, with particularly relevant estimated impact on the network edge architecture.…”