The 5G acronym refers to the fifth generation technologies and standards for mobile network. It is an enabling technology for innovative services that regard the way people live and move or the way they produce the companies.
Worldwide, 2018 is the first year in which 5G’s practical demonstrations have been made starting from the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in Korea. The European Union has included the future 5G connections between the 2020 targets.
Number of devices in 5G technology is expected to increase by about 50 billion by 2020, to manage this huge number of UE we need a flexible and scalable mobile network. In this way, flexibility and scalability go hand in hand and ensure that the mobile network can be adopted in the network environment of a particular use case.
Italian 5G EXPERIMENTATION Is something ABOUT 190 MILLION EUROS OF INVESTMENTS
According to ITU, 5G networks should allow data transfer to at least 100 Mbps downstream and 50 Mbps upstream for each connected user., while 5G connectivity must remain usable up to speeds of 500 km/h! Furthermore, devices must quickly put themselves in a low-power state when they are no longer in use.
Moreover, 5G latency, under ideal conditions, should be ≦4ms but ITU has also introduced URLLC (ultra-reliable low latency communications) connections with a ≦1 ms.
With 5G, the capacity of the network is considerably increased, since each cell must sustain at least 20 Gbps in downstream and at least 10 Gbps in upstream.
5G can allow connection of one million devices per square kilometer; therefore, telecommunications operators must have at least 100 MHz in frequency, with the possibility of scaling up to 1 GHz.
In Italy, the auction issued by the Ministry of Economic Development has assigned the use of the portion of the spectrum between 26.5 ÷ 27.5 GHz, 1.000 MHz (1GHz) that will offer 5G high performance connectivity with small antennas (small cell)!
As never before, entire industry has moved well in advance to support a new technology such as 5G.
Italy, is among the first countries of what is called “First 5G Wave”, or the first group of nations to adopt these new networks:
- TIM, Fastweb & Huawei are experimenting the 5G network in Bari, for one of the first “4.0” ports in Italy. In this case the 5G technology is under test to improve security, access control and logistics
- In Matera was installed a device equipped with “Massive-Mimo” technology. In Matera, applications for augmented reality are being realized, for visits to museums and to the artistic patrimony of the city. This choice is not accidental because Matera has been elected European Capital of Culture for 2019
The plan of Tim, Fastweb and Huawei for Bari and Matera is worth 60 million euros
Furthermore, Open Fiber and Wind Tre have planned an investment between 30 and 40 million for Prato and L’Aquila, to cabling the city with 13 thousand kilometres of optical fiber to connect 23 thousand buildings – including private homes, companies and institutions – with an investment of 8 million euros.
Moreover, Milan is the choice of Nokia and Vodafone. Vodafone put 90 million euros on the plate for the 5G plan in Milan with the creation of a traffic monitoring system to prevent collisions between vehicles, which by 2018 will cover 80% of Milan and the metropolitan area by 2019.
The Touring club association is participating in augmented reality applications for visiting the monuments of the Lombard capital.
Always in Milan, Vodafone has already involved the San Raffaele Hospital, Nokia and Qualcomm in the development of connected ambulances. In fact, thanks to the 5G network’s architecture and using Vodafone Multi (Access Edge Computing – MEC), the Emergency First Aid Nurses can:
- make high resolution video calls with the NOC to monitor patient status in detail or identify, through augmented reality glasses, the faces of patients with chronic diseases to promptly respond
- display complex protocols while performing emergency interventions, all through vocal interaction provided by artificial intelligence applications
Smart Agriculture
5G is also protagonist in the world of agriculture with the applications of “intelligent agriculture” that are tested on the Italian territory for the development of the so-called “precision”; agriculture through robotics systems dedicated to automation it’s possible to grow the analyzes and carry out targeted interventions which reduce the use of pesticides, optimizing field productivity and reducing environmental impact.
Conclusions
Those examples are just few applications of 5G: smart city, public safety, environmental monitoring, industry 4.0, health, media, education and virtual reality, automotive and mobility, road safety, tourism and culture, smart agriculture, …
5G is the first key for IoT (Internet of things), blockchain, digital payments, big data and artificial intelligence, all use cases based on data connection and reliability.
Nowadays, we have just to wait until 5G will become a reality around us in order to start to play with all “future” applications that will be released. The future is now!
