# A Cyber-Physical Approach for Residential Energy Management: Current State and Future Directions
## 5 Communication Network
end-to-end, and a multi-service ecosystem in which users share the physical infrastructure resources and use virtualization method to efficiently meet the requirements of a variety of applications. The main limitation relies on how to efficiently use the physical network, providing a reliable and secure data exchange at the same time [13]. A general overview of the smart city network infrastructure using 5G technologies in shown in Figure 10.  
5G includes different slices, defined in [136] as a collection of logically customized network functions. These are:  
Figure 10: Deployment of Wide Area Network (WAN) using 5G technologies. Figure 9: Schematic diagram of a Home Area Network (HAN). * enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) delivering peak data rates up to 10 Gbps and coverage requirements [136; 137]. * ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication (uRLLC), also known as critical communications, which minimizes the delays up to 1 ms [136; 137]. * massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) which supports over 100 times more devices per unit area compared to the previous generation (4G) [136; 137]. The support of machine-type communication (MTC) via wireless technology is a very demanding challenge in cellular communications. MTC collects a series of distinctive requirements compared to most internet traffic. Among them low or no mobility, time-controlled operation, tolerance to delay, and requirements for a secure connection to maintain data privacy, are a set of the main concerns in this regard [138]. The need for very low latency communication networks such as 5G imposes new requirements over HANs. According to [38], key challenges lie in wall penetration losses, path losses, and the handling of interference. Therefore, the infrastructure deployed inside the household will necessarily need to adapt and evolve. In [13], the authors proposed a case study in which data generated by household appliances are transmitted to the home gateway using a short-distance communication technology, such as WiFi or Zigbee. Then, the data is sent using long-distance 5G communication technologies to a cloud service provider (middleware). Once there, data storage, management, and analysis take place. The authors of [8] remarked that artificial intelligence (AI) will become indispensable in the near future to make residences more adaptive instead of \"just automated\". In [139], the authors highlighted the usage of cognitive radios in Smart Grids. They implemented different Zigbee configurations with energy-efficient spectrum-aware algorithms. In the near future, IoT is expected to grow to become the Internet of Everything (IoE), which aims to trigger the massive deployment of metering devices, appliances, and CPS beyond the capabilities of 5G. Faced with this difficultly, the scientific community has started researching and envisioning sixth generation (6G) mobile communication networks. In the 6G era, applications such as holographic telepresence (HT), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), extended reality (XR), smart grid 2.0, industry 5.0, space and deep-sea tourism, and hyper-intelligent IoT are expected to become a reality. These applications require a Tbps data rate and around 0.1 ms of latency [137]. In [137], the authors gave a comprehensive review of the development towards 6G highlighting socio-technological trends, emerging applications, and the requirements to achieve the aforementioned applications. The authors explained that the launch of 6G communication networks by 2030 with a network reliability of over 99.999%.