#5gwireless

[curelet-blog]

Properties of 5G wireless network. At 5G security #DataHub session @Communitech #DataHub. #5Gsecurity #wireless #5Gnetworks #5Gwireless #4Gnetworks #4Gwireless #DataHubSessions @CityWaterloo #kwawesome #wrawesome (at Communitech Data Hub) https://www.instagram.com/p/B213Us7givC/?igshid=vecg2e7m8urf

[curelet-blog]

5G wireless network slicing. At 5G security #DataHub session @Communitech #DataHub. #5Gsecurity #wireless #5Gnetworks #5Gwireless #4Gnetworks #4Gwireless #DataHubSessions @CityWaterloo #kwawesome #wrawesome (at Communitech Data Hub) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2125yrgF3b/?igshid=1xmfkkg7jbcjs

[curelet-blog]

Comparing 4G & 5G requirements. At 5G security #DataHub session @Communitech #DataHub. #5Gsecurity #wireless #5Gnetworks #5Gwireless #4Gnetworks #4Gwireless #DataHubSessions @CityWaterloo #kwawesome #wrawesome (at Communitech Data Hub) https://www.instagram.com/p/B210R3cAz6_/?igshid=zi1dzaosg7by

[dpa-scope-sight-blog]

The Coming Economic Sector Underlying 5G Wireless

Fifth Generation Wireless (5G).  It’s coming, and it’s supposed to blow us away: 10 Gbps, highly reliable, and near ubiquitous connectivity.  Basically, it powers the Internet of Things (IoT).  The use cases are many: smart cars, smart energy grids, virtual reality (VR), and more.  Excited?  Good, but notice that 5G wireless infrastructure must be different than 4G infrastructure because the technology is fundamentally different.  It must integrate with our physical infrastructure much more tightly than 4G because 5G achieves its performance through high-frequency line-of-sight communications, multi-device multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO), cognitive radio link adaptation, multi-device beam forming, and more.  What that means is that 5G infrastructure will be complex, tightly-coupled, and impossible to centrally manage.  Therein lies great economic opportunity in the distributed management of the 5G wireless infrastructure.  5G will require an entirely new sector of the economy—something far beyond a 4G provider’s maintenance truck—focused on building, configuring, maintaining, securing, and regulating 5G wireless infrastructure. 

The user experience will be very different from the “on-button” 4G paradigm where the 4G infrastructure is essentially a static overlay over our physical infrastructure. We rely on the telecommunications companies to place cellular towers where we’ll need them.  If we have a problem, we move somewhere else and check the signal bars.  With 5G and the IoT, we’ll have many more devices connected (refrigerator, air conditioning, wearables, toys, VR devices, drones and robots, etc.).  New use cases will demand much higher quality of service: remote medical procedures, home health monitoring, distributed manufacturing, smart roads, etc.  These 5G communication nodes (many mobile) must share spectrum, deconflict line-of-sight interference, and sort priority communications.  While dynamic spectrum sharing and other smart features in 5G networks will mitigate problems, they cannot anticipate all configurations, requirements, and user-contexts.  Further, the number of system purposes, user perceptions of purpose, emergent behaviors, policy domains, and enforcement mechanisms will also grow.  In this dynamic environment, a mixture of rapid end-user response and readily available expertise will be required to manage the network.

The first thing we’ll need are tools analogous to physical hammers and screwdrivers that enable the end-user to perform routine maintenance.  For example, consider what an end-user can do with electromagnetic source and propagation visualization, some modest network planning tools, and an app that integrated them à la Pokemon Go for real-time viewing, troubleshooting, and optimization of a home network.  It could, for example, monitor the number, location, and assigned-frequencies of “dumb-devices” to prevent them from overwhelming a smarter device which was using dynamic spectrum sharing.   In a home with 50 wireless devices, fault states such as “transmit-state power flapping” should be easily identifiable and correctable.  These tool sets could be completely passive, or with the cooperation of different device makers, remotely manage devices creating a maintenance ecosystem.

Second, we’ll need access to trained experts when the problems become complex.  This is analogous to hiring a contractor to make a home addition.  As an example, assume there is a popular restaurant and a nearby medical office.  In a 5G world with routine telemedicine, the doctor could have a life-critical Quality of Service (QoS) link to a hospitalized patient.  The restaurant owner may have a very busy Saturday night with long waits and folks demanding all that 5G has to offer to enhance their dining and social experience.  Assume further that having some experience with his home network, the restaurant owner installs a gateway with a directional antenna to improve customers’ experience while they wait—but the side lobe ends up pointed right at the doctor’s antenna! Does the owner know what the antenna side-lobes are?  Does he know how to read the city-issued critical QoS link map?  Does the doctor log interference over the weekend to be alerted to potential conflicts?  Interference insurance anyone?

The new medical application with need for high QoS has collided with the ease-of-use and penetration of 5G.  Clearly, if an experienced 5G contractor installed the restaurant’s new gateway, everything would be fine.  No one dies or gets sued, and you can stream the big game via Ultra-HD VR on-demand while in line for a table.  This case actually raises more questions (revenue opportunities) than it answers.  Who licenses the contractor?  How can you know who installed a new node?  What does life-critical QoS mean?  Do local governments need to think about license requirements on transmitters in a dense 5G world?  Will doctor’s offices or public safety officials be allowed to use specially licensed nodes that can override others in the network?  With the potential for these sorts of interactions, we expect demand for new experts analogous to today’s plumbers, electricians, building inspectors, liability lawyers, code enforcers, and lobbyists.  

5G will be an adventure.  Certainly, there are many very different opportunities suggested here beyond app development.  At the very least there are opportunities in tools, expertise, and law & policy.  It’s not a monolithic opportunity to invest in. However, before you pass 5G infrastructure up for a sexy VR start-up, think about what branding and consumer confidence has done for those who support infrastructure and the logistics behind it:  Black & Decker, Caterpillar, Keysight, Beckman Instruments.  Lastly, recall that enabling infrastructure opportunities can look subtle at first, but lead to very deep market penetration: this article was written with Word (Emacs would have been overkill).