Hyper-reliable and low-latency communications for interconnected vehicles

The sixth generation (6G) and beyond wireless networks are expected to support the autonomous wireless world, thus shaping the way we live, work, and communicate with each other. As one of the most important pillars for underpinning autonomous wireless connectivity, hyper-reliable and low-latency communications (HRLLC) will play a pivotal role since it aims to support mission critical services which have strict requirements in terms of latency (a few milliseconds end-to-end latency) and reliability (99.999%). Undoubtedly, such requirements pose new research challenges in the design of air interface, resource allocation, network protocol, core networks, and the integration with existing wireless/wired communication systems. Against this background, in this talk I will describe the role of HRLLC in the emerging and future wireless networks, summarise various sources of end-to-end delay in current wireless systems, and introduce promising HRLLC solutions, ranging from the most fundamental transmission paradigm, namely, short-packet communications, to a new performance metric for evaluating information freshness, namely, the age of information, and to the cutting-edge access strategies, such as non-orthogonal multiple access and massive access. This talk will offer valuable insights for wireless engineers and researchers, equipping them to design and implement mission-critical communication networks for unprecedented applications such as the Internet of Vehicles and smart wireless factories.