Abstract

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) are becoming an increasingly important theme for researchers in multiple fields to investigate. In this paper, we look at how a group of 40 experts from academia and the mobile communications industry identified ways in which future 6th generation (6G) mobile communications is linked with the UN SDGs while writing a white paper on the topic. In this paper, building on the methodology of critical participatory action research, we look into the detailed operations of the expert group, offer a new way to look at the 6G development process guided by the UN SDGs and describe the linking process for the UN SDGs and 6G in a way that may guide other researchers in similar endeavors. We also present initial outcomes of the linking process that led to the white paper published in 2020 (Matinmikko-Blue et al., 2020). The aim of this research is to identify and formulate a process to recognise the connection between UN SDGs and 6G.