5G

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Every major evolution in cellular technology brings its share of critical improvements, and 5G is no exception.
Although we are well aware that 5G is not a buzzword or a marketing concept, it is nevertheless essential to identify its limits and real capabilities to avoid the risk of disillusionment, diluted investment and, above all, project failure.

First of all, it's important to assume that the technological gains between 5G and 4G are at least as significant as those between 4G and 3G. These gains will enable new functionalities, new services, and even new professions, if and only if they are perfectly identified and integrated into the project specifications...and the final product.

Secondly, and by no means least, 5G is not intended to replace 4G. 5G can't meet every need today, and 4G solutions, particularly for IoT, will be around for many years to come. Operators have clearly expressed their desire for these two technologies to complement each other, so it's important to study the context in which they will be used in order to make the most appropriate choices.

There are three main strengths of 5G, but the best known is probably its ability to support very high data rates.
This explains why its main market today is mobile telephony. A pioneering market by definition, cell phones can exploit part of this speed to bring new uses, or enhance existing ones.

However, this speed can vary greatly depending on the frequencies used to carry the signal. We're going to talk about theoretical data rates only, as these vary greatly depending on the environment, which can hardly be reproduced identically.

From 2.1Gb/s on the 3.5GHz band, throughput can quickly plummet to 615Mb/s when using the 2.1GHz band.

While the 3.5GHz band has been exclusively allocated for 5G use, it is perfectly possible to use the 5G protocol
on 4G frequency bands. To take this a step further, ARCEP has authorized FREE to reallocate (refarm) the 3G 700MHz band to deploy its 5G network.

This latter strategy is a double-edged sword: like all (more or less) low frequencies, its ability to penetrate difficult environments, such as buildings, is highly relevant to guaranteeing a certain level of service to as many customers as possible. On the other hand, these same low frequencies are incompatible with excessively high data rates, and Free can only provide a service that's barely faster than its standard 4G network. 

In this specific case, one of the major risks is the end customer's perception, which tends to cast doubt on the benefits of 5G, and therefore on the investments made, which on the other hand are fully felt on the final bill. Given the sums involved, the "customer experience" here is intrinsically linked to the way in which 5G is implemented, both on the network and in the customer application.

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Standards and applications :

One of the major advantages of cellular technology is that it is a standard defined and implemented by a group of manufacturers.

The large number of players organized into workgroups guarantees interoperability and a pool of suppliers to keep prices down. 

These standards are defined by a balance between 2 major organizations:

• 3GPP, the non-profit organization historically set up for the creation of 3G, brings together 7 telecoms standards development organizations (ARIB, ATIS, CCSA, ETSI, TSDSI, TTA, TTC). These organizations therefore have a stable framework for defining :

• Network core, i.e. the central nodes at the heart of operator networks.
• Related services and systems. 
• Central network and terminals.

• The GSMA, an association representing the interests of cell phone operators worldwide. While 3GPP defines network specifications, the GSMA defines functions and their implementation, such as voice over LTE (VoLTE) or embedded SIM (eSIM). The GSMA also organizes all communication and promotional activities around its industry, such as the Mobiles World Congress, which takes place throughout the year in the 3 major regions.
  
  
  

Capacity and infrastructure :

As we've just seen, the speed advantage of 5G is closely correlated with the network infrastructure put in place by operators. But it also depends on the network infrastructure of the manufacturer that has decided to operate its own 5G network. For this is one of the great advances of this standard, namely the ability to deploy a private network without depending on an external operator. Modelled on the LoRa network, customers can purchase and deploy their own base stations, subject to declaration and authorization. Of course, the aim here is not to compete with operators - as these installations must be geographically very limited - but to cover a private space, such as a building or an industrial site, for one's own needs. Based on a perfectly defined and controlled standard, the customer can implement applications based on mass-market technologies, and thus achieve lower costs and higher functionality than a solution based on a proprietary standard. And avoid the worst-case scenario: the aggregation of multiple technologies, the sum of whose integration and sourcing efforts can make most projects too complex and therefore unviable.

As 5G is still in its infancy, volume-based economic optimization is still very timid, and the technology is currently confined to the test and prototype phases. But the prospects are there, and 5G will provide concrete solutions in the next few years.

Key features of 5G :

1 . Flow

The most visible part of the 5G iceberg, throughput is the best-known function, as it is the one most expected by the "standard" user. With initial data rates available today at around 1Gb/s, and expected to rise to 10Gb/s as communication protocols become more mature, the prospects for both consumer and industrial markets are excellent. 

2 . Latency :

That's the other promise of 5G: its ability to get messages through much faster, for much greater immediacy. We're probably thinking of the world of gaming, where this feature may be essential, but by no means vital. We're more interested in the medical world, where this function enables the surgeon to control in (real) time the equipment working on the patient from hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. Any inaccuracy or discrepancy in handling can have immediately dramatic consequences. 

These latencies can also have a significant impact when precise time stamps are key to the targeted application. Or when piloting industrial drones in critical or sensitive environments can become dangerous. 

3 . Simultaneity of connections :

The feature that is perhaps the least well known or palpable to users is 5G's far superior ability to handle a huge number of simultaneous connections. While this is not necessarily visible for mobile telephony (apart from when a TGV switches 1,000 cell phones from one base station to another in a fraction of a second with no perceptible interruption in service) the big winner from this feature is the world of IoT. The ability to connect millions of devices per square kilometer reliably and securely can become an important differentiator. Markets such as smart cities and smart buildings are the first potential customers for this functionality. The diversity of objects to be connected is huge, and a first response to this industry expectation was the standardization of Mesh technologies. Developed and available today on Bluetooth BLE technology, this network solution can support up to 100,000 simultaneous connection points, and has been made possible in particular by the Finnish company WIREPAS.

Interestingly, Wirepas has just made a 5G version of its protocol official! 5G on a proprietary network!

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When 5G just won't do:

1 - Low consumption :‍

With telephony clearly a driving market in the choice of developments, the first iterations of the 5G standard published by 3GPP focused on throughput and latency. With target applications such as video streaming, social networking and online gaming, the power consumption level of terminals supporting this type of application was not one of the technical criteria. 

Of course, low-power functions are planned in 3GPP's work over the long term, via the "Releases" that take place every 1-2 years, but today there is clearly no solution to serve ultra-low-power markets.

Today, these markets are still much better served by NB-IoT or LTE CatM1, and it is not possible to consider 5G as any kind of alternative.

3GPP began defining the specifications for an exploitable 5G for the IoT from Release 15, and even more advanced in Release 16. But just as there is a close relationship between a terminal and the infrastructure for efficient 5G, it is essential that the Silicon present in communication modules supports the specifics of the 3GPP releases to make low-power functions active.

Chipset manufacturers such as Qualcomm, ASR, Sequans and others do not yet have 5G components capable of supporting these low-power modes.

The industry is now focusing on better integration of NB-IoT and LTE-CatM1 products, guaranteeing connectivity to 5G infrastructures. Module manufacturers, in particular, are guaranteeing "5G Ready" products: applications won't be able to exploit all the advantages of the network, but they will be guaranteed to be able to connect to it for their primary function, which is to transmit data. With this in mind, the chipset inside these modules supports firmware updates.

Operators, for their part, are working to prepare their networks to accommodate this type of module with peace of mind, and to guarantee their SIM customers continuity of service in the years to come. They have set up R&D working groups dedicated to ensuring the long-term viability of CatM1 and NB-IoT solutions in a 5G world.

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2 - LTE and Voice :

Until the advent of 3G, GSM networks were based on a "switched" (or PSTN) network. 2.5G, or GPRS, brought packet mode, and this dual technology continued with the advent of 3G.

Nevertheless, 4G brought IP-based communications, such as the global Internet, without retaining the ability to work in dial-up mode. This limitation implied a very important restriction for many industries: the absence of voice support. Some solutions have since been found, such as Voice over IP (VoIP) or Voice over LTE (VoLTE), but these involve sometimes heavy and always costly software developments. Either on the customer side, or on the operator side.

Advances in these voice technologies have come a long way in recent years, making them accessible regardless of the available bandwidth. The majority of module suppliers have Voice solutions ranging from LTE Cat-M1 to 5G. Even if French operators have no commercial offer for their CatM1 low-speed network, other players in Europe and elsewhere in the world are already marketing alternatives.

And when we consider the 2 most important criteria in terms of cellular strategy - i.e. component cost and geographical coverage - applications where voice use is critical (such as alarm systems) cannot today consider 5G as a viable short-term solution.

Why 5G?

The "revolution" so heralded by the arrival of 5G is still barely palpable 2 years after its launch in Europe.

As we saw above, exploiting the full range of 5G functionalities depends on a number of interdependent elements: network infrastructure, terminals, but also customer applications and fleet homogeneity.

5G only really comes into its own when it can be operated "end-to-end": intermediate layers such as a core network or a 4G terminal, an ADSL connection or a WiFi network can have a direct impact on the performance of a 5G offering.

In a context where service continuity can be guaranteed throughout the communication chain, a 5G offering can provide a viable and reliable solution. And the first area to exploit these advantages is industry. The first examples of industrial sites exploiting 5G, in a proprietary local area network, saw the light of day in 2021, notably at Lacroix Electronics. Wishing to optimize flows within its new electronics production plant, LACROIX Electronics deployed its own network, freeing itself from a more local WiFi network and taking advantage of 5G's ability to offer much better speeds and immediacy. Less sensitive to interference, offering much better ranges, in a much more secure way.

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‍5G and security:

4G is built around its "network core", and as long as this core is protected, the network as a whole benefits from a certain level of protection. 5G is a much more decentralized technology: base stations have been designed with, and incorporate, far greater computing power than before, and much of the data processing is now "pre-machined" by these access points before being transmitted to the final processing points. On the downside, this decentralization opens up many more possible access points to ill-intentioned individuals. It is therefore necessary to protect these more numerous access points, which naturally requires more resources, both human and system, and therefore investment. The slightest vulnerability on a less protected site can jeopardize the entire network and the objects connected to it, on a global scale.

Increased throughput also puts a strain on protection systems, which have many more bytes to analyze. Added to this is a globally heterogeneous installed base, an architecture that every security specialist dreads most. With the explosion of the IoT market, billions of network entry points need to be monitored, analyzed and protected.

5G brings new challenges for network protection specialists.

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