The 11th annual Brooklyn 6G Summit (B6GS) explored the impact of AI and machine learning on telecommunications. Held October 23–25, 2024, on the campus of NYU Tandon School of Engineering in Brooklyn, the Summit was attended by 300 people and was streamed live to a global audience in 25 countries.
Presentations and lively discussions over three days explored the ways in which AI and other quickly advancing technologies promise “superpowers” for 6G wireless, while at the same time posing challenges in areas such as security and sustainability.
For the first time, the Summit featured a student panel of doctoral candidates from schools including NYU Tandon School of Engineering; the University of Texas, Austin; Northeastern University; Technische Universität Dresden; and the University of Oulu in Finland.
Nokia’s Peter Vetter, President of Bell Labs Core Research, moderated the panel, engaging the students in a spirited round of discussion about the challenges and opportunities in wireless, the benefits of industry collaboration with academia, and interesting aspects of wireless tech that attracted the students to the field.
The student panelists, who included Ruth Gebremedhin and Mingjun Ying of NYU WIRELESS, predicted that security will become a key issue as AI models are infused into research, practice, and products. They also saw AI as an accelerator for optimizing channels. Mingjun, for example, said his group is working on channel propagation measurements with an eye on devising ways of using AI to drive applications, leading to better coverage. He said his work is about how computer vision and AI transformers can create material-embedded 3D environments for industry to help with challenges around base station deployment. “I’m interested in leveraging AI to optimize network deployment within a material-embedded 3D environment and evaluating the Waste Factor for a more sustainable wireless network,” he said.