By Dr. Ioannis Karamitsos
5G is on its way. The main characteristics of 5G technology are that it will be significantly faster than existing mobile connectivity. 5G technology will change the way we communicate by supporting immersive applications, a fully realised IoT, lower latency, and improve both energy and spectrum efficiency.
There is a possibility that commercial deployments could begin as early as 2017, but it is more likely that full, wide-ranging commercial deployments will happen in 2020.
Which apps will benefit?
Lower latency means better performance for high bandwidth apps. For consumers that means being able to stream video far more reliably or download a movie in a matter of seconds, and for the enterprise it means supporting mobile working much more effectively. 5G will make multi-person video calling on the move a reality and will deliver the fully wireless, cloud-based office, with all unified communications (UCC) apps more reliably and consistently available. Other sectors that will really benefit from 5G’s lower latency are IoT, Smart cities, self-driving cars, gaming and broadcast.
Enabling the enterprise
Because 5G will be significantly faster than 4G, it will take mobile working to the next level and enable higher productivity across more devices. 5G will help deliver a mobile digital workspace that offers increased flexibility and agility. One of the most crucial UCC tools, video conferencing, will benefit hugely. Given that 94 per cent of businesses saying that the biggest benefit of video conferencing is increased efficiency and productivity, that is likely to be a killer application for enterprises.
Businesses could also be able to turn to 5G as a fixed-line network replacement, meaning they can connect up enterprise branch offices much more quickly and easily with minimum network latency using novel technologies such as device-to-device (D2D) technology.
5G will play important role in IoT industry
IoT is fast becoming a reality, with billions of connected devices and machines expected on the network over the next few years, there is a real possibility of 5G providing the actual network backbone that powers IoT. 5G will deal with the huge number of devices connected and we would have to allocate time slots dedicated to each of them. Currently there are a lot of researchers exploring how we can design non-orthogonal multiple access by assigning a lot of IoT users/ devices with different quality of service requirements into the same time slot or frequency channels.
Potential use cases
5G could provide a dedicated network for emergency services, where reliability and real-time communication is crucial. Its lower energy-per-bit usage would improve battery life of connected devices and low latency would provide sub-millisecond support for emergency services.
5G could also provide the bandwidth for apps like VR and AR. An upcoming service that is expected to provide a new user experience is UHD video streaming. 4K video is a must-have service for next-gen mobile and 5G will support and power that too.
Autonomous cars are another area where 5G will be critical – it will be the mechanism that ‘drives’ self-driving cars. The latency present in a 4G network means that cars currently travel over 4 feet before they receive a notification that another vehicle or obstacle is ahead! With 5G that signal is much faster and makes the vehicle significantly safer, with stopping distance down to just a couple of centimeters.
Ultimately, 5G could provide the backbone of our economy and society in future, and will impact hugely on enterprises in every industry and on every area of our daily lives. Just be prepared to wait a few years for 5G to deliver all this. That said, if you aren’t already planning for the advent of 5G and making business decisions to help you benefit from it, what’s keeping you?
