5G Myths Facts Use Cases Solutions Realization

What is 5G? The first thing come into mind:

1. All about faster downloads

2.  Killer of Fixed Line Networks

3. The one North America is using since 2017

However, the reality is:

5G: Myths Vs Reality

 

5G is  not just another 'G' in telecom evolution and there are facts to support this, which includes unprecedented growth in high speed data demand & connected devices, completely different and unique use cases, Ubiquitous network and inception of new network functions.

The demand of high speed data is not new for Telecom consumers. However, 5G is not all about a higher speed; it has to be something more than just a bigger data-pipe. That is the only thing that can survive this transition and sustain the next generation mobile technology on the course of future benchmarks.

Below is a picture, which depicts the journey of Telecom industry, since its inception till date.

Telecom Convergence Journey with Horizontal Industries

The noticeable points here are:

1. Mobile Internet opened up a new doors of Multimedia offerings for Telcos
2. High quality content demands draw attention of Computer and Software industry to enter into Telecom Domain
3. By the time LTE became matured, the new ICT industry has taken a shape converging all 3 main Horizontal Industries (Telecom, Computer, Entertainment & Multimedia) into a single ICT industry
4. Today, as 4G has reached its limit and Telecom has converged all the possible Horizontal industries, there is nothing left for a new generation of Telecom to offer.

In other words, there is not really a need of a new generation of Mobile Telecom or 5G for that matter, as there is no new use case left to cater in any of the horizontal industry, because if its only to offer more speed, they can widen their fiber optic infra and densify their coverage in 4G itself.

This concern of sustainability is actually the prime thing, which 3GPP, ETSI and all Telecom Vendors CSPs were having in their minds, when they were developing the 5G specifications. That's what makes them open up beyond thee Horizontal industries, 'THE VERTICAL INDUSTRIES':

Entering the Verticals

But there is are problems with each of these vertical industries use cases:
1. Each industry has their unique use cases
2. Each use case demand is different than others
3. One network is not enough to cater all these use cases

For instance:
1. Connected Cars, they don't require a very high bandwidth, as they are only transmitting 10s of bits per second; instead they require a wider coverage, >100Mn Connections per Squire Km, a different identity system, battery life of a decade or more.
2. Industrial Automation is fine with a limited coverage and not very high number of connected devices, but they require extreme reliability and very low latency (sub-milliseconds)
3. Immersive gaming (AR/VR) requires very high internet speed, not only in downlink, but also in uplink with a latency >10ms.

Looking at the above use cases, its clear that each use case demands a unique characteristics of network service(s) & 5G is all about fulfilling those. Hence, 3GPP has categorized, categorized all 5G use cases under 3 category:

3 Umbrellas of Vertical Industry Use Cases

1. eMBB (enhanced Mobile Broadband): Gigabit Mobile Internet
2. mMTC (massive Machine Type Communication): Millions of connection per Sq. Km.
3. URLLC (Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication): Remote Healthcare, Industrial Automation

Below is a double click view on the above use cases and their unique network demands, along with the possible solution(s) for each of such use cases, all driving along under the umbrella of above 3 main categories:

Granular Use Cases

Just to make this reading light, I will be taking 3 different use cases from each of 3 umbrella with its possible solution in 5G:

1. Gigabit Mobile Internet

To provide 100s of MbPS or more data throughput, it all brings us down to the bottleneck of the Mobile network, which is the Radio Network. There are 2 solutions proposed in 5G for such use cases of very high data throughput demand:

(i) Use of mm(millimeter) waves: The good thing about mm waves are that they can offer much higher spectrum (upto 300mhz of channel bandwidth), which makes it possible to pack more data into the carrier

(ii) Use of Beam-forming & Beam-Tracking: Since mm waves requires a very tiny spot to focus on, it makes easier to point the carrier waves to a particular target UE, rather than radiating it all the way wide open.

(iii) Use of Massive MIMO: By using as high as 64X64 MIMO makes it possible to increase the spectral efficiency and data rates by a factor of 10 than using 8X8 MIMO mostly in LTE.

Use of mm waves makes Massive MIMO possible, since the antenna size is very small in case of mm waves, which makes it easier to fabricate 10s of such antennas easily on a usual UE.

Massive MIMO and Beam Forming

However, there are certain drawbacks of using mm waves; by having such a small wavelength, mm waves are very prone to the atmosphere conditions and can be blocked easily by a mere presence of fog or mild shower. Which certainly makes it impossible to use mm waves for wider outdoors.

2. Connected Cars

Connected cars requires a wider outdoor coverage, Millions of Connections per sq. Km and a longer battery life. To provide solution for such characteristics, the use of multiple access networks (especially mid range waves, WiFi and possibly Satellite Communication in certain areas), along with less complex data processing algorithms & use of On-demand network scaling (to cater to sudden increase in no. of connections) will be required. Below are 3 solutions to cater such requirements:

Wide Coverage for mMTC

Non-IP Data Delivery

(i) GERAN, UTRAN, WiFi, Satellite Access Network to provide wider coverage

(ii) NIDD (Non-IP Data Delivery): Use of Ethernet PDU Sessions/ Flow, reducing the complexity, hence  increasing the battery life.

(iii) NFV for auto-scaling and auto-healing of network functions for providing on-demand network capacity

3. Remote Healthcare

To support such a critical use case, it is obvious to have an extremely reliable connection and a sub-millisecond of latency. Distance between the application-server and the Access-Network may not be a conceptual reason of increased latency, but it really a contributing factor in latency. Hence, it make sense to keep the application-server as close to the RAN as possible, this is what makes the use of MEC (Mobile Edge Computing). However, Edge Compute doesn't always talk about to put everything on the edge, instead it is to be decided by considering 2 factors; Latency Demand of Application, Cost of bringing the NFs to edge. It is well known that bringing everything to the edge is always leads to higher cost, as edge-compute can only serve a specific set of consumers and is usually non-reusable for other use cases.

Below picture outlines the trade-offs and options of Edge-Compute for latency sensitive Use-cases:

Hence to summarize it all, we had 3 areas of use cases, with different approaches for each off them and it is definitely not possible by a single network. So, 5G is a network of multiple network options.

Mobile Edge Computing Options

Then the question arise on how to manage such a dynamic demand of use cases and their possible solution in run time. That is where the concept of Network Slicing comes in. I will be writing another write-up on Network Slicing for this. But here is the final take on 5G, What actually it realize into:

5G: Summary View