# The 6G Ecosystem as Support for IoE and Private Networks: Vision, Requirements, and Challenges
## 3 Background and Current Development of 6G  
The upcoming sixth-generation communications networks are poised to make a monumental leap beyond the capabilities of 5G, driven by the ever-evolving requirements of future services and societies. This transformative shift will revolve around processes that are data-centric, intelligent, and automated [56]. The progress of disruptive technologies across diverse domains will come together to meet the requirements of emerging applications and use cases [42]. The 5G Infrastructure Association (5 GIA) envisions the next system generation, 6G, operating with flexible and on-demand infrastructure for mobile telecommunications systems [1]. It is anticipated that 6G will address various challenges and create an ecosystem deeply intertwined with artificial intelligence. The architecture of 6G should be sufficiently flexible and efficient, facilitating the integration and self-aggregation of connectivity and computing capabilities dynamically, heterogeneous types of resources of diverse elementssuch as a network of networks, joint communication and sensing, terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks, and novel AI-driven capabilities, including also local and distributed computing resources. The 6G framework is envisioned as a resource-as-a-service (RaaS), extending beyond bandwidth, time, power, and space considerations, emphasizing the imperative of optimizing infrastructure as a flexible and configurable resource tailored to meet distinct service demands. Furthermore, with the capabilities of dynamic network infrastructure management and service orchestration mechanism together, artificial intelligence (AI)-aware networking approaches, 6G can be viewed as an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) [57; 58]. The 5 GPP Architecture Working Group [59] states that to obtain its full potential, 6G needs to be AI- and computation-pervasive, which calls for the 6G architecture to be data-driven to enhance the optimization of its air interface--spanning physical layer setup, mobility management, resource allocation, and QoS guarantee, achieving a powerful and robust distributed AI platform, i.e., approaching the 6G network as AI-as-a-service (alaaS). Because it is generally accepted that 6G systems necessitate the development of a strategy for the delivery and dissemination of services through a cloud-based framework to users and 6G applications [60], it is proposed that this objective can be achieved through an expanded interpretation of existing cloud-based service orchestration concepts, allowing for the organization and integration of diverse services to cater to the requirements of all types of 6G user applications, i.e., seeing 6G architecture as everything-as-a-service (EaaS). The architects of the 6G network strive to supplant wired connections, ensuring reliability across diverse connectivity scenarios. These scenarios span from stationary, isolated devices to dynamic mobile groups, all of which necessitate seamless communication both among themselves and direct connectivity to the primary network. In other words, 6G is poised to build upon the techniques of the 5G systems while introducing advanced components such as enhanced RAT, terahertz (THz) communication [61; 62] with abundant spectrum resources, molecular networking concepts, and integrated aerial and inter-terrestrial networks, urban air mobility (UAM), UAV, high-altitude platform stations (HAPS) and satellites of systems in low earth orbit (LEO) and geostationary orbit (GEO) [63; 31; 64; 65], uncoordinated networks and the co-existence of RF--FM, TV, WiFi, visible light communication (VLC), energy-efficiency, and communication environment intelligence, ambient backscatter communication (AmBC) for energy savings, symbiotic communication radio, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) for non-line-of-sight (nLoS) scenarios, a holistic security paradigm, physical layer security (PLS), and blockchain (BC) [66; 67].