Kathy Gibson reports from Ericsson Business Innovation Forum in Stockholm – It is hoped that 5G will become a reality as soon as 2020, and Ericsson is already well on its way to making the next-generation network infrastructure a reality.
Dr Sara Mazur, head of Ericsson Research, points out that the telecommunications giant has a wealth of experience in developing new networks, with 2G, 3G and 4G all having been invented and brought to market by Ericsson.
5G will be the network that makes a networked society a reality, she says, and will embrace the four cornerstones needed to build the new and networked world.
They are:
* Connected devices – this embraces not only smartphones, tablets and PCs but everything that can be connected, Dr Mazur says. “So we will have industry applications, sensors, cars, even remote surgery. This will place a lot of new requirements on the network.”
* Services related to connected devices – these include traditional network services as well as those for both mission-critical and business critical systems.
* The networks – their capabilities need to reach far beyond what they do today. “We will require networks that are really smart, with the right level of performance; that are device-aware, user-aware and provide the best performance.”
* Cloud and cloud technologies – again, these services will include those that companies are executing in the cloud today, Dr Mazur says. “We see cloud and cloud technologies moving into our networks,” she says. “A lot of the technology in the core of the network will execute in the cloud. This will give us flexibility in terms of where we execute functionality – it can be done close to the access layer, or at the core; or in both places at the same time. This will all be enabled by a distributed cloud environment.”
There are three areas that relate to all four pillars of the networked society, Dr Mazur says.
They are:
* Management – not only of networks, but of devices and services, possibly of the applications and the end user environments – and since they are complex networks, this management has to be easy.
* Security – the data carried on 5G networks has for to be secure and the networks have be secure against unauthorised access or tampering. “We also have to consider personal integrity and privacy,” Dr Mazur says.
* Sustainability – this needs to span networks – where zero energy consumption is the goal – but the ability to connect small sensors with small batteries to contribute to sustainable growth of society – reduce waste of resources and travel for instance.
“And of course mobility is key to all of this,” Dr Mazur says
Ultimately, the 5G network will allow non-limiting access to anyone, anywhere and at any time, she says.
The first step towards making 5G ubiquitous, and allow the huge eco-systems that will be required to be built, is to promote a global standard. Other features that will be required are great energy performance and the need to drive performance across multiple domains. The new networks will be the foundation of efficient industries and society, Dr Mazur says, so there will be a need for mass market personalisation.
“This means machine type communication will become important,” she says. “This could be domestic machine type communication and more critical machine tyre communication. Massive MTC would be low cost, low energy, with small data volumes, massive numbers and long ranges. Critical MTC, on the other hand, would be ultra reliable, with very low latency and very high availability.
“This poses very tough requirements,” Dr Mazur says. “5G needs to meet: 1000x mobile data volumes; 10x to 100x number of connected devices; 5x lower latency; 10x to 100x end user data rates; and 10x battery life for low power devices.
“On top of this it needs to be ultra-reliable and ultra-available.”
To meet these requirements, the entire network needs to be evolved. This includes not only the radio network, but the IP infrastructure, the cloud infrastructure and the network applications. On top of this, management and orchestration should be evolved, along with the need to have good insight into devices and industry applications. Security and sustainability also need to be part of any network evolution.
Ericsson is helping to drive global 5G standards, engaging with global forums as well as those in various regions.
The company is also busy evolving the actual technology, with a number of test systems and test beds. In fact, Ericsson reached 5Mbps in the lab as recently as July, and expects to evolve this quickly.