5G: Laying the foundation for real IoT
What is IoT?
Our current Internet is a network which “mainstream” devices such as mobile phones, computers, smart watches and servers can connect to. The Internet of Things would be a Internet where all kinds of devices can access the internet to receive, share and process data on. Your coffeemaker communicating with your alarm to know when to make your coffee based on when you wake up or your car telling another car that there is an accident or telling the authorities that there is a hole starting to grow in the middle of the row would be examples of internet of things. Currently there are some closed IoT’s which are exclusive to certain brands, but there isn’t a open system for all types of devices.
A Brief History of the Internet
The Internet started out in the 1950s and was driven by the US military for internal communication purposes. The first package sent was between USLA and Stanford [8]. At the beginning internet-use was prohibited and inaccessible to the public and strictly restricted to selected governmental organisations, mainly in Europe and North America.
The change from 1G to 4G networks has been radical. The first and second generation were mainly focused around voice and some minor text based features and have little to nothing in common with the internet that we use today. 3rd and 4th generation on the other hand extended the internet to multimedia and reliable use on mobile devices. Currently the main changes that we as end users experience are speed ups through better infrastructure. But industry leaders such as AT&T, Ericsson and Research Centres are working on the next big thing – the 5th generation of the internet, which is going to get rolled out at the end of 2018 for the Winter Olympics in South Korea as learned during our last speaker panel. 4G and all its feature will stay around for a long time and it seems like 5G will be more of an additional feature rather than a replacement. [3]
The Future of the Internet: 5G
Many of us might think that 5G simply means that the internet will get even faster but there is much more to it. As explained above IoT means that millions and billions of smaller connected devices can share information with each other. Since one of 5Gs main objectives is to enable IoT the most important feature will not be a speedup/bandwidth, but a better latency, which is vital for processes which require a minimum delay [10]. If a car communicates with the environment to make decisions it is extremely important that the data is exchanged without any delay, because that could be fatal. Another big goal of 5G is to make the internet more energy efficient and make computing power more accessible through connecting devices. [9]
What does this mean for IoT?
5Gs main objective is to support IoT. Eventually we will have billions, maybe trillions of devices connected to the internet where they can compute and share data. This will open a whole new dimension to our already very digital lives. There is still a far way to go since companies and other stakeholders need to agree on standards and data sharing agreements which is a very difficult task because there are so many different interests and concerns. Who is going to own the data? Which data can, should or must be shared? Which protocols are to be used? I am sure these questions will be resolved, but it might take some time. Until then we will have to enjoy the internet that we have and the limited “IoT” in the form of connected homes, smarter cars or medical technology.
Sources
- https://www.ericsson.com/en
- https://www.techrevel.com/article/1120/the-internet-of-things
- https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/what-internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet
- http://about.att.com/story/5g_evolution_to_over_20_metros_in_2017.html
- http://thehackernews.com/2016/01/google-drone-5g-internet.html
- https://www.wired.com/2017/02/what-is-5g-and-when-do-i-get-it/
- http://www.bmwblog.com/2016/06/14/bmw-ready-to-fight-hackers-and-for-5g/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJgRFwsDoqM
- https://qz.com/179980/the-plans-for-5g-to-power-the-internet-of-things/
One comment on “5G: Laying the foundation for real IoT”
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Prior to my Undergraduate studies I lived in China where I worked at a consultancy and learned more about Chinese Culture and Language. In Berlin I worked at a Startup in analytics, Customer Relationship Management and Marketing.
It is one of my goals to become fluent in Chinese with the aim to strengthen the economic partnership between China and Europe, especially within technology.
Hi Dean,
This was a good read. I agree with your point that not only speed but also reduced latency is a driver behind 5G supporting IOT. That being said, I feel that the most important feature of 5G is not speed and reduced latency but in fact, it’s reliability. One example is self-driving cars. The reason is principally for safety. One cannot have self-driving cars that don’t transmit data properly.