IoT and 5G Communication Technology

Author: Cao Jun, Zhang Guoxin, He Yuewen

The Origin of IoT

When Kevin Ashton, a British citizen, was working at Procter & Gamble (P&G), he found that a lipstick product he was responsible for often went out of stock and was in a replenishment state. After investigation, he discovered that there was a large amount of inventory of that lipstick in the company’s warehouse. The lack of synchronization of data information led to issues in the direct goods allocation between the store and the warehouse, affecting sales performance and increasing inventory costs. This prompted Ashton to think about how to solve the problem of tracking goods logistics.

Figure 1 Rouge and RFID Tags

At that time, British retailers were promoting a membership card with built-in RFID (electronic tags), and manufacturers demonstrated to Ashton how to read the membership information in the card and explained how RFID works. Suddenly, Ashton had a breakthrough idea to use RFID for tracking goods logistics. After some thought and communication, with funding from P&D, Ashton established the Auto-ID Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The Auto-ID Lab’s research gradually formulated the Electronic Product Code (EPC) and the Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode system, which later became the standard RFID product label.

IoT and Wireless Communication Technology

Narrowly defined, the Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the “internet connecting things to things,” where the connected entities include both objects to objects as well as objects to identification management devices.

Broadly defined, IoT refers to the integration of information space and physical space, which is the fusion of virtual and reality, digitizing and networking all objects and events, achieving information exchange between people and people, people and things, and things and things, enabling automatic identification, monitoring, positioning, and remote management of objects. IoT is based on the existing internet and various proprietary networks, transmitting various data collected and summarized through the perception layer, achieving real-time data transmission while ensuring data security.

Widely, IoT is defined with a three-layer architecture: perception layer, network layer, and application layer. The perception layer consists of billions of sensing devices such as RFID, sensors, and smart terminals, continuously generating massive data in TB or PB sizes, mixed with valid data and a large amount of noise; the network layer is composed of wide area networks and metropolitan area networks centered on 2G/3G/4G/5G mobile communication networks, supplemented by wireless technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, and Lora, forming sensing networks or local area networks that reliably and securely transmit data to their respective destinations; the application layer consists of various platforms such as smart cities and vehicle networking clouds that clean, analyze, mine, and model data, producing new applications and services across domains and boundaries.

Figure 2 IoT Architecture

Wireless communication technology is a key technology for network interconnection in IoT. Short-distance technologies include WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, etc., while long-distance technologies include 2G/3G/4G. However, if we categorize these wireless communication technologies based on power consumption and transmission distance, we find that there is still a lack of technologies in the low power consumption and long-distance range. In recent years, low-power wireless communication technology (LPWAN) has developed rapidly, forming major technical standards such as NB-IoT, LTE eMTC, LoRa, and SigFox:

NB-IoT Based on cellular Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) has become an important branch of the Internet of Everything. NB-IoT is built on cellular networks, consuming about 180KHz of bandwidth, and can be directly deployed on GSM, UMTS, or LTE networks to reduce deployment costs and achieve smooth upgrades. Huawei has developed two NB-IoT chips, Boudica120 and Boudica150, which are now in mass production; in terms of network construction, China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom have completed the deployment of NB-IoT networks.

Table 1 Domestic Mobile Operators NB-IoT Deployment Frequency Bands

LTE eMTC A technology for IoT access based on LTE evolution, eMTC uses licensed spectrum like NB-IoT, provides coverage enhancement (15dB), supports high-speed mobile reliability, and congestion control, and supports standalone positioning. Compared to NB-IoT, eMTC has significant advantages in latency and throughput.

LoRa Developed by Semtech, LoRa is a low-power wide-area wireless communication technology. The LoRa Alliance was established in March 2015. The LoRa industry chain matured earlier than NB-IoT, with some operators like Orange, SKT, KPN, and Swisscom choosing to deploy LoRa as a supplement to cellular IoT.

Sigfox Sigfox, based in France, utilizes Ultra Narrow Band (UNB) technology for its IoT wireless network. Sigfox deploys its network through self-built and cooperative partnerships with operators, providing customers with IoT, API interfaces, and cloud computing web services, allowing customers to purchase services at a package price of about $1 per device per year. Sigfox is relatively closed, and its ecosystem is built relatively slowly. Sigfox networks have covered all of France, Spain, and parts of cities in the United States, the Netherlands, and the UK.

Other LPWAN technologies include RPMA, EC-GSM, Weightless-P, UNB, etc.

Figure 3 LPWAN Rate and Coverage Distance

Table 2 Comparison of Four Mainstream Wireless Communication Technologies in IoT

5G Mobile Communication

The development of mobile communication started with 1G analog, experienced 2G (GSM/CDMA), 3G (WCDMA/TD-SCDMA/CDMA2000), and 4G (TDD-LTE/FDD-LTE) widespread coverage, and is currently operating on 5G experimental networks. The services have evolved from voice to voice + data, and then to multimedia services; the speed has increased from several Kbps to hundreds of Mbps, and then to Gbps; the transmission delay has decreased from seconds to hundreds of milliseconds, tens of milliseconds, and then to milliseconds; the number of access devices has also increased exponentially.

Figure 4 Milestones in Mobile Communication Technology Development

In recent years, applications such as VR/AR, unmanned autonomous driving, and 4K/8K ultra-high-definition video have emerged, but they have all been hindered by the technical bottlenecks of current 4G and LPWAN, which cannot solve the issues of ultra-high-speed data transmission, high reliability, and ultra-low latency, leading to poor user experience and low safety factor. These innovative applications are still in the experimental stage and require 5G communication technology to be realized. The following table shows the significant improvement in performance indicators of 5G compared to 4G:

Table 3 Performance Indicators of 5G Vs 4G

What New Technologies Does 5G Adopt to Significantly Improve Performance?

Massive MIMO MIMO technology has been used since 4G, mainly with 2*2 and 4*4 configurations, while 5G employs large-scale antenna arrays of 64*64 or more.

Figure 5 MIMO Antenna Array

New Multiple Access By overlaying multiple user information in the same resources for transmission, advanced algorithms are used on the receiving side to separate out the information from multiple users. Algorithms include SCMA (Sparse Code Multiple Access), PDMA (Pattern Division Multiple Access), and MUSA (Multi-User Shared Access).

New Multi-Carrier New multi-carrier technologies such as F-OFDM, UFMC, and FBMC are used to reduce subband or subcarrier spectral leakage through filtering, lowering the requirements for time-frequency synchronization, thereby avoiding the main drawbacks of OFDM.

Figure 6 Flexible Adaptive Frame Structure Based on F-OFDM

Duplex Mode In existing 2G, 3G, and 4G networks, two duplex modes are mainly used: Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD), and each network can only use one duplex mode. The 5G network closely integrates FDD and TDD, intelligently adjusting and utilizing duplex modes based on service and environmental awareness, resulting in a 1+1>2 effect in various aspects such as spectrum efficiency, service adaptability, and environmental adaptability.

Figure 7 Full Duplex Mode of 2G/3G/4G and 5G

Millimeter Wave Frequency Band The 5G frequency band is divided into two main sections: Sub-6G and millimeter wave. The Sub-6 spectrum bandwidth is 20M, while the millimeter wave spectrum bandwidth can reach 100M.

Figure 8 5G Wireless Frequency Bands

Device-to-Device (D2D) Direct Access Refers to direct communication between terminal devices using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and LTE-D2D technology.

Three Major Application Scenarios of 5G

Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) An application scenario with ultra-high data transmission rates, allowing users to easily enjoy online 4K/8K videos and VR/AR videos, with user experience rates improving to 1Gbps (4G’s maximum is 10Mbps), and peak speeds even reaching 10Gbps.

High Reliability Low Latency Connection (uRLLC) Targeting applications such as vehicle networking, industrial control, and remote medical services, achieving connection latency at the 1ms level while supporting high reliability (99.999%) connections under high-speed movement (500KM/H).

Massive IoT (mMTC) 5G’s powerful connectivity supports massive device access for IoT applications such as smart cities, smart homes, and vehicle networking.

China Telecom’s 5G pilot cities include Chengdu, Xiong’an, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Lanzhou; China Mobile is conducting field tests in five cities: Hangzhou, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Suzhou, and Wuhan; China Unicom’s 5G pilot cities include Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Xiong’an.

Discussion on the Industrial Positioning of 5G and IoT Promoting Each Other’s Development

2019 marks the first year of 5G, which is not only a hot topic in the global mobile communication industry but also a hotspot for exploring the combination with various industry applications, rising to a national strategy and one of the government-driven policies for industrial upgrading. The key difference between 5G mobile communication networks and the previous 1G to 4G mobile communication services is that, based on communication between people, it adds real-time communication service capabilities between things. IoT has combined with the Internet+ to form some industry application hotspots several years ago, but most of these are targeted at specific industry needs and scenarios, using communication protocols defined by their own development for interconnection and access, resulting in IoT not yet forming a global unified technical specification and standard, nor a market-dominating factual standard, leading to a somewhat fragmented state.

Due to the massive investment in network construction by 5G operators, as well as the technological advantages of high-speed access and low-latency transmission, there is a need to monetize valuable industry applications. Mobile operators have begun to systematically enter the field of IoT construction and access. This trend will have a long-term impact on the IoT industry and enterprises in the industrial sector. In the past, the IoT industry mainly relied on the Internet and 4G mobile internet for cross-network transmission, but due to limitations in transmission bandwidth and latency, many IoT application services have not achieved corresponding large-scale commercial use. In the 5G era, IoT application services are expected to see significant breakthroughs and developments.

Regarding the mutual promotion of industrial development between 5G and IoT, I would like to share some new ideas and exploration insights for discussion.

1. 5G Needs to Empower Valuable Innovative Applications to Unleash Its Value!

In the 4G era, China saw the birth of Alipay (which disrupted the financial mobile payment and personal financial services industry, integrating people’s livelihood application services), WeChat (which intercepted mobile operators in social, SMS, low ARPU voice, and video communications, integrating numerous people’s livelihood application services), Douyin (self-media short video live streaming, on-demand, etc.), and Pinduoduo (mobile e-commerce combined with production video live streaming), while overseas there are Facebook (social, etc.) and more…;

What can 5G bring to individuals, industries, and society? Everyone is exploring forward.

During the pilot process of 5G mobile operators, we have seen many applications of 5G + 4K/8K, 5G + AI, 5G + remote surgery, unmanned autonomous driving, etc.; but while we are amazed and curious, have we considered that many applications are not as necessary as our daily need to make phone calls and stay connected online? That is: to make 5G networks ubiquitous and available on demand at any time. The construction and optimization of 5G networks require investments in the trillions, which puts pressure on the financially strong 5G mobile operators. How to combine the technological advancement of 5G with more valuable industry applications and empower various industry applications through 5G MEC (Multi-Access Edge Computing) to have the opportunity to recoup investments has become a consensus in the industry.

2. How Can the IoT Industry Leverage 5G for Its Own Industrial Development Instead of Being Fragmented?

The IoT industry has been developing for a long time, but due to the lack of a unified technical standardization organization, the entire industry has exhibited fragmentation. The numerous “standards” in the IoT field have the advantage of being highly targeted and lower terminal costs, but the downside is that it is difficult to form industry standards and create an ecological environment, resulting in low levels of industrialization. The large-scale promotion of 5G network construction and commercialization by mobile operators, along with eMBB, mMTC, and URLLC, will promote the standardization and industrialization of IoT standards. The IoT industry should participate in constructing its own industry applications and cloud services based on the 5G network environment to avoid being eliminated by fragmentation. The introduction of 5G MEC will greatly assist IoT virtual operation service providers in building their own IoT commercial application ecosystem. Transforming their technology into regionally differentiated and resource-based industry applications and cloud service businesses will help form a symbiotic and mutually beneficial ecosystem between the 5G and IoT industries.

3. How Can 5G Mobile Operators and IoT Industry Service Providers Collaborate for Development?

Currently, mobile operators are addressing the demand for low-cost IoT, hoping to promote the maturity of the industry chain and reduce costs through NB-IoT/eMTC, gradually transitioning smoothly to 5G mMTC; at the same time, major public cloud giants have launched their own public cloud IoT operating platforms and ecosystems. The survival path for the IoT industry may lie in regional industry application IoT hybrid cloud service platforms for virtual operators: from the perspective of industry IoT application customers, IoT solutions based on their actual industry needs will have their personalized characteristics and differentiated demands. Public cloud IoT service providers, due to their lack of specific industry personalized and differentiated delivery capabilities and geographical network access resources, need to rely on industry application solution partners to address project implementation, engineering execution, network access, and customized delivery issues; while 5G operators also face certain implementation difficulties due to factors such as network construction costs, industry application solution selection, and equipment procurement processes. From the perspective of the high implementation costs of individual IoT projects, striving to become a regional IoT hybrid cloud virtual operation service provider can solve the above issues. By leveraging industry-appropriate professional solutions, hardware and software products, and the hybrid cloud business operation platform constructed based on public cloud and provincial-level 5G networks, it can gradually develop from pilot verification testing to trial commercial use and provincial-level promotion of the same industry across cities. 5G operators focus on achieving widespread high-speed, real-time, and low-access-cost network connections, while the IoT industry focuses on implementing valuable application scenarios in vertical industries and providing corresponding cloud services, which will be the focus of collaboration between 5G operators and various IoT application technology and resource parties. Various diverse IoT access connection technology solutions and products are being marginalized and eliminated through the process of fragmentation and competition.

Conclusion

5G will become one of the mainstream technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT). With the collaborative coverage and optimization of the new 5G and existing 4G mobile networks, 5G operators and the industrial sector present opportunities for resource collaboration and cooperative development of various vertical industry application scenarios while solving their existing problems.

Regional IoT industry cloud service providers may be the appropriate positioning for the IoT industry, possessing relevant access connection technologies, resource operation platforms, and industry customers. As 5G operators are also internet access operators, their “cloud-network collaboration” strategy will deploy various existing IoT solutions on the target customer’s 5G base station MEC platform as needed, enabling nearby empowerment and customizable delivery. Moreover, broader cross-network connections are also the resource needs for industry customers, and the trust level of industry customers in operators’ resources and public services is objectively higher than that of general IoT providers. We believe that in the near future, the commercial environment for 5G IoT connections will realize wide coverage, deep coverage, low power consumption, large connectivity, and low costs, truly achieving the integrated applications of 5G and IoT, thus promoting social progress and enhancing our national productivity.

References:

[1] IMT-2020 5G Business Model / ITU

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