Should users wait for 5G?
01 December 2022
One of the hot topics of the moment is the introduction and roll-out of 5G technology, and the benefits this will bring to the Industrial Internet of Things.
The potential benefits of 5G are widely reported:
• Higher data throughput
• Better penetration
• Low latencies enabling real-time operations
• Higher mobile device densities
• Flexible public/private network space, enabling performance-based SLAs
• Low-power transceiver designs for long-term battery powered devices
What is less widely discussed, and therefore less widely understood by those considering the adoption of 5G, is that these benefits are not all available concurrently. Indeed, some are effectively mutually exclusive. This means that whilst 5G offers many more ways to optimise the characteristics of the communications network to match the requirements of specific application deployments, it is by no means a panacea for all mobile communication issues.
Whilst it will undoubtedly be a very significant technology for the future of the Industrial Internet of Things, there are many cases where existing LTE-based technology meets the needs of an application just as well, with the huge additional benefit that it is widely and cost effectively available today.
What is 5G?
The latest generation of mobile cellular telephony has a number of differences from its predecessors. Most of the detail changes exist buried deep in the core of the network infrastructure. These pave the way for more flexible Radio Access Protocols leading to higher mobile device densities, more flexible private network creation and more efficient and reliable routing of traffic through the core.
At the cell towers, beam-forming technology improves signal quality for any individual session, and new frequency bands have become available beyond those used in previous generations of cellular equipment. The much higher-frequency bands added enable faster transmission and therefore higher data throughputs, coupled to higher device densities, although it should be noted that the highest frequency bands are only for applications over relatively short distances.
Better for some
This means that roll-out of 5G networks across Europe will bring with it the possibility to address applications that were previously not practical. For example, at the high end of the radio spectrum, the high bandwidth, low latency expansion will provide opportunities to expand real-time video monitoring applications beyond the current physical limitations imposed by the need for fixed wire or Wi-Fi connection.
In the middle ground, however, there are a huge number of use cases where there is a need for near-real-time reporting of a medium volume of data, and here the benefits are less clear. The ability to support more subscribing devices within a particular cell is of value in extremely densely populated urban environments, and the beam-forming capability should mean the service levels in sparsely populated rural locations is better, but both of these situations tend to be outliers from the majority of IIoT applications.
There is better implicit security within the access mechanisms to a 5G network, plus much more flexibility to create and maintain private access groups to the network, but other than convenience and perhaps some cost benefit, these really achieve little that can’t already be done with LTE in a large number of cases
The same is true for low-speed, low-power, high-penetration applications. 5G leverages the NB-IoT technology that is already available in many LTE deployments. For sure, the vastly improved device densities promised by 5G will enable the co-existence of many installations in non-mission critical monitoring applications, which will in turn provide massive volumes of low-level data upon which AI systems can operate. This will undoubtedly bring benefits to smart city and infrastructure applications, as well as to OEM machine builders keen to add new services to their portfolio. It remains a fundamental truth, however, that this functionality is essentially available via LTE today.
What about private networks?
One element of 5G that is widely referenced as a big advantage is the ability to create private mobile networks. Whilst it is true that the changes in the core of the network will make this easier to accomplish, many potential users fail to realise that it is perfectly possible to deploy private LTE networks today. Indeed, there are many examples where private LTE networks have been deployed within factories and other environments to create technical and commercial advantages.
So, should you wait?
Unless you have an application sitting in one of the categories outlined above, the case for waiting for the relevant 5G service to become available, rather than proceeding today using existing LTE networks is very difficult to justify.
Time will tell if there is ultimately a cost advantage to deploying on a 5G network, but common sense suggests that, like any new technology, it is likely to carry a premium in the early days. This will be compounded by the need for the cellular providers to quickly recoup their costs both in acquiring the required radio spectrum licences, and in the capital expense associated with the roll-out of the new infrastructure needed to support 5G.
These substantial investments, and the need to maximise early revenues suggest the initial focus of the cellular operators is likely to be biased towards high-volume, high-bandwidth applications, and this means consumer-led video and broadband provision, rather than mainstream M2M projects.
Even when 5G networks become ubiquitous, any investment made in existing LTE solutions will be preserved. The 5G specifications define the use of hybrid networks using 4G RANs coupled to a 5G core, or vice versa. Indeed, many of the initial implementations have been hybrid in nature, with the focus being on the improvements to the core network, meaning the wireless technology used in the cell towers is still LTE.
All of this suggests that the sensible strategy if implementing a cellular architecture for an M2M deployment is not to wait. Instead, it is to analyse the application requirements and segregate those which can only work by leveraging some new feature provided by 5G. The remainder, which is likely to be the majority of use cases, should be implemented immediately using LTE, safe in the knowledge that the investment is protected.
Those parts that need to use 5G should be piloted as soon as the required services are available, with a view to roll out alongside the existing deployment once they are proven to be effective.
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