KEYNOTE: What Industrial 6G will be?

Dr. DAVID LÓPEZ
Distinguished Researcher, iTEAM-UPV

Dr. David López-Pérez is a Distinguished Researcher at the Universitat Politècnica de València, specializing in wireless communications. With experience at Nokia Bell Labs and Huawei, he has worked on small cells, ultra-dense networks, Wi-Fi 7, and AI-driven network optimization. He has published over 171 papers, filed 60 patents, and received prestigious awards like the IEEE ComSoc Best Young Professional in Industry Award. His research focuses on 6G, non-terrestrial networks, drone communications, and energy-efficient networking. He has led interdisciplinary teams and contributed to major industry projects and IEEE publications.

Abstract: The sixth generation (6G) of mobile networks promises to revolutionize wireless communications through new use cases, advanced architectures, and AI-driven operations. However, history shows that not all proposed technologies achieve widespread adoption. This talk critically examines which 6G innovations are likely to be deployed and which may face challenges, drawing insights from 5G’s successes and limitations. While massive MIMO, network slicing, and URLLC have been successfully integrated into commercial 5G networks, mmWave has struggled due to cost, energy efficiency, and propagation constraints, and it is not the only feature facing  adoption challenges.

In the second part, focusing on centimeter-wave (cmWave) frequencies -probably the key feature-, this keynote presents performance insights from recent 6G research. Strategic upper mid-band (FR3) deployments have demonstrated median user rates of 300 Mbps and peak rates exceeding 1 Gbps, significantly outperforming 5G. These improvements stem from wider bandwidth, advanced massive MIMO, and optimized beamforming. However, these gains come with trade-offs—6G increases power consumption by up to 33% compared to 5G, emphasizing the need for energy-efficient hardware, smarter spectrum utilization, and AI-driven optimization to balance performance with sustainability.

Dr. WEN TONG
CTO, Huawei Wireless

Dr. Wen Tong is the CTO, Huawei Wireless. He is the head of Huawei wireless research. In 2011, Dr. Tong was appointed the Head of Communications Technologies Labs of Huawei, currently, he is the Huawei 5G chief scientist and led Huawei’s 10-year-long 5G wireless technologies research and development.

Prior to joining Huawei in 2009, Dr. Tong was the Nortel Fellow and head of the Network Technology Labs at Nortel. He joined the Wireless Technology Labs at Bell Northern Research in 1995 in Canada.

Dr. Tong is the industry recognized leader in invention of advanced wireless technologies, Dr. Tong was elected as a Huawei Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. He was the recipient of IEEE Communications Society Industry Innovation Award in 2014, and IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Industry Leader Award for “pioneering technical contributions and leadership in the mobile communications industry and innovation in 5G mobile communications technology” in 2018. He is also the recipient of R.A. Fessenden Medal. For the past three decades, he had pioneered fundamental technologies from 1G to 5G wireless with more than 530 awarded US patents.

Dr. Tong is a Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering, and he serves as Board of Director of Wi-Fi Alliance.

Abstract: The AI revolution drives the creation of the superintelligence in digital world and the general-purpose humanoid robot to the physical world, especially to the consumer market. to deliver either digital-intelligence or the physical-intelligence at anytime and anywhere, this is the mission for 6G wireless. In this talk, we present the current status and issues for the physical-intelligence, and the fusion of digital-intelligence with physical-intelligence on the 6G wireless platform, this is not a simple computing task, such a fusion need to combine the connectivity, sensing, mobility and action-execution on the radio interface, and therefore, this will be a dominant factor to shape 6G design, therefore to transform the 6G-RAN and A-RAN.

Prof. Dr. Dr. José Capmany
Co-Founder iPRONICS

Prof. Dr. Dr. José Capmany is a Full Professor in Photonics and leader of the Photonics Research Labs (www.prl.upv.es) at the institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (www.iteam.upv.es), Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, Spain.  He holds BSc+MSc degrees and doctorates in Electrical Engineering and Physics.

He has published over 650 papers in international refereed journals and conferences and has been a member of the Technical Program Committees of the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC), the Optical Fiber Conference (OFC). He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE. He is also a founder and chief innovation officer of the spin-off companies VLC Photonics (acquired by Hitachi in 2020) dedicated to the design of photonic integrated circuits and iPronics (www.ipronics.com) dedicated to programmable photonics.

Professor Capmany is the 2012 King James I Prize Laureate on novel technologies and the National Research Award in Engineering 2020, the two highest scientific distinctions in Spain, for his outstanding contributions to the field of microwave photonics. He has also received the Engineering Achievement Award from the IEEE Photonics Society and the Innovation Prize from the Royal Society of Physics in Sapin. He is a double ERC Advanced and a double Proof of Concept grantee and was a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Photonics Society for the 2013-14 term. Associate Editor of IEEE Photonics Technology Letters (2010-2016) and the IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology (2016-2018). He served as Editor in Chief of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics from 2018 to 2022. In 2025 he has been elected a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain.

Abstract: In this talk, I will address the area of integrated microwave photonics, describe someof its basic operation principles, and illustrate how thistechnology can be useful to overcomeseveral limitations of 5/6G communication systems. I will describe as well some of the salientresults obtained from the joint collaboration of Huawei and ITEAM-UPV

Prof. VICENTE BOTTI
Director, VRAIN, VALGRAI

Dr. Vicente Botti es Catedrático en la UPV y Director del Instituto Valenciano de Investigación en IA (VRAIN). Pionero en IA, Sistemas Multiagente y Tecnologías de Acuerdo en Europa, ha liderado más de 80 proyectos de investigación y dirigido 24 tesis doctorales. Cuenta con más de 400 publicaciones y ha desarrollado tecnologías transferidas a empresas. Ha recibido premios como el Sapiens 2019 y el Premio Nacional de Informática 2018. Es miembro destacado de sociedades científicas y ha ocupado cargos institucionales clave en la UPV y en asociaciones europeas de IA.

Abstract: AI is transforming cities into more efficient and liveable environments, but its success will depend on balancing innovation with ethics, inclusion and transparency. Collaboration between governments, businesses and citizens is key to building cities that are not only ‘smart’, but also humane and resilient. The cities of the future, driven by artificial intelligence (AI), will seek to optimise resources, improve quality of life and ensure sustainability. The combination of 5G and artificial intelligence (AI) in smart cities has great potential to transform the way urban areas function, as there are many key applications, challenges and trends that the collaboration of these two technologies will produce in the cities of the future, including: smart data management, urban mobility, sustainable energy, public safety, environment, urban planning, citizen services, circular economy, etc.