5G will be as disruptive as the Industrial Revolution
However, this is just the beginning. 5G looks like it will be a combination of many protocols, modulation schemes and air interfaces all run through a Software Defined Network (SDN) implementing separate Data and Control Planes. Such a network could be configured on the fly with minimum set up times while using scalable inexpensive hardware akin to data centres.
The promise here is that finally everything will be able to be connected across the world. There will be opportunities and massive disruption. The way cities and healthcare are run are already prime candidates for change. 5G will unify disparate technologies such AI, robotics, logistics (drones), medicine, IoT, automation, data…. Companies will in effect be digitised.
Pierre Nanterme, CEO of Accenture, in an article for the World Economic Forum contends that digital is the main reason that just over half of the companies on the Fortune 500 have disappeared since the year 2000.
Connecting everything is a challenge but satellites and LTE have been used to bring broadband to rural areas. In this context drones are seen as the future of bringing wireless to everyone. The Guardian recently reported that Google is testing solar-powered drones at Spaceport America in New Mexico to explore ways to deliver wireless high-speed internet potentially 40 times faster than 4G, in a secret project codenamed Skybender.
In terms of technology, 5G has many challenges to overcome, but as we have seen with 5G and LTE, these can be potentially overcome fairly quickly. Even though 5G is at least 4 to 5 years out research into areas such as Massive MIMO and millimetre wave have progressed rapidly.
NYU WIRELESS has just announced it will build an advanced programmable platform to rapidly design, prototype, and validate technologies vital for the millimeter wave radio spectrum, which is potentially key to launching the next ultra-high-data-rate generation of wireless communication, or 5G. This software defined radio (SDR) platform will integrate an electrically steerable phased array with no physically moving parts and near-instantaneous steering.
Equipment from NYU WIRELESS affiliate sponsor SiBEAM, a Lattice Semiconductor company, will provide the RF front end for this testbed another affiliate sponsor, National Instruments will provide a high bandwidth and massive baseband processing system to create millimeter wave prototypes capable of high data rates and very low latency.
Technology such as Massive MIMO will probably end up being absorbed into evolving 4G standards but I expect the transition to 5G will happen when millimeter wave becomes a part of the standardisation process.
However, 5G also depends heavily on regulators. While 5G is still seen as a positive force in changing the world, like all technology revolutions many will struggle to adapt to such changes that typically manifest themselves in deflationary periods and changes in the types of jobs available. For example, will 5G by connecting everything make Globalisation a necessary component of any economy? Will this imply that wages across the globe will need to be more uniform?
On the positive side, renewable energy healthcare and cities could benefit enormously from smart systems that connect all the dots and give technicians precise control over resources and data.
Leading ICT policymakers at last years Global Forum hosted in Oulu, Finland, see the 5G revolution as the greatest positive upheaval in the field since the creation of the GSM standard in the early 1990s.
“Possible business areas and models to benefit from 5G networks can range from health care and security to retail and manufacturing, and everything in between. Fast 5G networks can become a powerful enabler for businesses, but only if the regulators allow the frequencies to be used without prohibitively steep license fees”, said Matti Pennanen, Mayor of Oulu.
At the eve of the Global Forum, Professor Matti Latva-aho of University of Oulu commented, ”Regulators are soon set to face an unavoidable moment of truth. Will they have enough courage to make radical choices in allocating and licensing radio frequencies to push positive development? The US has already taken the first decisive steps in this direction — will Europe be left behind?”
One question in all this is where the IoT fit in with respect to 5G. Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) such as those developed by Sigfox and LoRa have taken on a momentum of their own. Even though technology such as LTE for machine-to-machine communications (LTE-M) or Narrow-Band LTE (NB-LTE) are set deploy in the near future Sigfox and LoRa are already there. However, the idea of minimising the number of networks required is attractive from cost point of view. Another key here is incorporating all this into an SDN, which will make it easier to add protocols and modulation schemes into the mix. Last year a Nokia Networks’ blog asked the question: Is Sigfox/LoRa the new WiMAX?
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