TOWARDS INTELLIGENT 6G-IOT ECOSYSTEMS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES, NETWORK ARCHITECTURES, SECURITY, AND EMERGING APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Research on sixth-generation (6G) wireless systems is increasingly shaped by the needs of large-scale, intelligent Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. Yet the literature remains dispersed across physical-layer technologies, network architecture, artificial intelligence, security, and application-specific studies. This systematic review brings these strands together and examines how 6G is being positioned to support future IoT ecosystems. The review searched IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar for peer-reviewed work published from 2023 to 2026. The screening process identified 120 records and retained 38 studies for the final thematic analysis. The evidence was organized around enabling technologies, integrated space-air-ground-underwater networking, edge intelligence and network slicing, resource management, security and privacy, and application domains including healthcare, industrial IoT, autonomous mobility, and extended reality. Across the reviewed studies, proposed 6G targets commonly include terabit-per-second peak rates, microsecond-level latency, very high connection density, and AI-native control. These capabilities, however, depend on unresolved issues such as terahertz propagation, scalable reconfigurable surfaces, trustworthy AI, post-quantum security, interoperable non-terrestrial networking, and sustainable deployment. The review therefore treats 6G-IoT not as a single technology upgrade, but as a tightly coupled communication-computing-sensing ecosystem whose success will depend on coordinated progress across several technical and governance layers.

"© 2026 by the Author(s). Published by IJAR under CC BY 4.0. Unrestricted use allowed with credit to the author."