HUMANIZING THE FUTURE

Marwa Chafii is a future builder trying to make an increasingly digitized world more human.

Professor of electrical engineering Marwa Chafii works on utilizing the exponential growth of network capabilities that people on-the-go will experience with the introduction of 6G technologies. In particular, she is contributing in engineering ways that would make possible technologies like having an uninterrupted conversation with a hologram of your mother while traveling on a bullet train.

The future Chafii envisions and researches would be welcome respite in a world that has moved many of its functions online. She points at the screen of our Zoom call and says “instead of this, imagine we are sitting next to each other and talking, you in your home, and me in my office.”

“I am interested in the human-to-human experience, connecting everything and everyone. 6G will bring up new technologies and applications that will reshape the world,” she said.

She sees 6G cutting edge technologies, which in early estimates predict an internet 10 times faster than today for consumers and even 100 times faster for business use cases, will finally unlock the potential of artificial intelligence and its ability to conduct operations through intelligent networking, including sensing. With low latency communications, remotely sensed information will be conveyed to an intelligent fast system, which enables timely reactions and decision making.

Consider the example of Siri, or Google Assistant. Those systems with advanced intelligent sensing would be so smart that one wouldn’t even have to ask how many eggs, because it would already know, from observing the context and based on learned experience, that you’re baking a lemon meringue and provide you with that information ahead of time.

AI and sensing in the development of 6G still needs time to implement, but it can signify a quantum shift in the way we interact with technology. Both academics and industrial actors believe the anticipated jump to higher spectrum internet would open up the potential of many systems that have been introduced today.

A SMOOTH RIDE

This vision extends to life beyond just talking to work colleagues, or loved ones both while stationary and on the move. Chafii works on providing seamless stability in any application that requires very high mobility, whether it’s on a highspeed train or in a car.

“Even today, we are losing connection when we have high mobility communication, so in my work, I design communication signals, or waveform, in a way to be more resilient and more robust,” she said.

In particular, the waveform, or the way in which data is transferred through wireless internet, should change depending on the device. Making a more dynamic system, Chafii says, that changes waveform signals according to the requirements of the application and the device needs to be considered in the future.

She is also working on providing more energy-efficient connected devices i.e. Internet of Things (IoT), like wearable devices, that she sees as an integral technology enabled by the future 6G connectivity. The signal emitted by these small and simple devices should be designed to consume less energy allowing 10-15-year battery life.

In these pursuits, Chafii will continue to work with academics and industry leaders to build our future, and possibly an experience that would see these words not read by you, but rather given as a presentation by the future builder herself.