The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners, from academia, industry, and standardisation organisations, to share views and discussions on the emerging research topic Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN), within the context of the six generation (6G) network evolution. NTN includes both earth orbit satellites and airborne vehicles. By 2030, many industrial and standards developing organisations are expecting the official rollout of 6G networks to meet the demands of mobile communications of 2030 and beyond. 6G is envisaged to provide global coverage and Tbps level transmission data rates for applications such as Virtual Reality (VR), 3D videos and Augmented Reality (AR). Besides higher data rates, 6G should provide lower latency, higher connection density and near 100% global coverage in comparison to 5G. To achieve these goals, new paradigm shifts are currently under investigation in terms of global coverage, utilised spectrum, Artificial Intelligence (AI) nativity, and security.
As the research and standardisation efforts for beyond 5G (B5G) are already underway (e.g., 3GPP has officially defined the evolution of 5G as 5G-Advanced), this workshop will efficiently bridge the academic research on 6G to integrate intelligent NTN with terrestrial and mobile networks to facilitate the global coverage 6G is promising. To unlock the full potential of NTN integration, within the context of Space-Air-Ground networks, several fundamental research issues need to be addressed especially on the heterogeneity of NTNs and complexity of provisioning services across multi-dimensional, multi-tier networks. Therefore, due to the timeliness of these research topics, we expect this workshop to foster novel ideas and visions on new potential directions of research on techniques and algorithms to achieve deep integration and flexible network operation of NTN in Future 6G.
