Ericsson recently announced that it is cooperating with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to carry out two scientific research projects, which will help establish a new network infrastructure in order to provide better hardware support for the next generation of 5G/6G mobile networks. Specifically, they will study lithium-ion chips to achieve neuromorphic calculations.

Through the new lithium-ion chip, fully cognitive AI processing can be performed while reducing operational complexity and energy consumption. This not only means improved network performance, but mobile operators around the world will eventually be able to reduce their energy use.

The partners will also study mobile networks that connect trillions of sensors and other zero-energy devices and use radio signals to power them. Ericsson claims that only using radio signals to power zero-energy devices is a major technical challenge, but it brings many possibilities for the development of smart cities.

Magnus Frodigh, head of Ericssons research department, said when discussing their work: “5G is leading a fully realized Internet of Things, bringing us closer to a truly connected world. A large number of tiny Internet of Things devices and artificial intelligence-driven cognitive networks These are the two driving forces for the next leap. Working with the excellent team at MIT, we hope to develop the hardware that makes this possible."