The Communications Industry ‘Rewires’ for 5G
As we have seen in the previous post – http://www.vamsitalkstech.com/?p=8615 -, the 5G technology standard for wireless communications is designed to provide businesses with a foundation for building applications that leverage faster, reliable, and ubiquitous connectivity. From an implementation standpoint, the largest communication service providers and managed network operators have begun introducing this technology after years of trial and experimentation. Carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon will be introducing their 5G networks in 2020 and moving from running limited trials to hotspots in high profile geographies such as NY and California, etc. It is a very similar story in Europe and Asia with both continents beginning to adopt the new 5G core. However, it needs to be understood that at the time of writing – Aug 2020 – public 5G networks are still not available widely as telcos need to deploy new hardware and software on essentially a block by block basis and then across cities in various states and provinces worldwide.
Image Credit – Qualcomm
The ITU (International Telecommunication Union) has done work in the area of illustration broad usage scenarios along with sample use cases. As with any new promising technology, it is on the industry and vendors to build an ecosystem of capabilities that leverage advances in radio connectivity, cloud-native software, NFV/SDN, etc to provide such applications. 5G will share radio frequencies with the older LTE as well as use millimeter waves (mmWave) with new smaller antennas.
Per the IMT 2020 Vision Document for 5G, 5G systems must dramatically outperform previous generation systems. [1]
5G should support the following:
(i)User experienced data rate: 0.1~1 Gbps.
(ii)Connection density: 1 million connections per square kilometer.
(iii)End-to-end latency: millisecond level.
(iv)Traffic volume density: tens of Gbps per square kilometer.
(v)Mobility: higher than 500 Km per hour.
(vi)Peak data rate: tens of Gbps.
The Main Use Case Categories For 5G
What aids the growth of 5G will be the sheer number of devices that are going online every month. This is aiding IoT, Edge computing, Industrial Automation, and more such uses demand high communication speeds at low latency.
5G defines three main use case categories
So what has the ITU-R categorized as key usages scenarios for 5G? The above illustration captures the three main categories along with examples.
- Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB): The Enhanced Mobile Broadband category of use cases include areas such as mobile hotspots where high data transfer rates are needed across wide geographical areas. The eMBB area addresses human-centric communications where user experience needs to be seamless. Examples include Video Streaming, supporting remote workers, mobile broadband, AR/VR, etc.
- Ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC): The second category of use cases include those where the latency of communication is critical in ensuring the safety of both consumer as well as industrial equipment. Thus, this covers both human and machine communication. Examples include vehicle-to-vehicle communication, industrial equipment controlled over wireless, supply chain automation, 3D gaming, and remote surgeries.
- Massive machine-type communications (mMTC): The final category deals with the explosion of devices that are all connected together and are low cost. These devices typically send out low volumes of data at regular intervals. A large category of these use cases deals with IoT scenarios.The following parameters are the requirements for IMT-2020 5G candidate radio access technologies [2]
Coming Up
References
[1] IMT Vision 2017
[2] IMT 2020 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMT-2020
[2] ETSI System Architecture for 5G https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/123500_123599/123501/15.05.00_60/