Feature: IoT
For IoT-device designers, the change that matters most is the split at the 4G node between mobile broadband and mobile narrowband
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Ways to benefit from 5G cellular networking technologies
By Rabee Alhayek, EMEA Vertical Segment Manager (Wireless Connectivity), Future Electronics
he mobile phone networking (cellular communications) industry likes to give the impression that its technology advances in a series of occasional yet massive leaps. Tis is reflected in the terminology it uses: moving from “2G” to “3G”, then to “4G” and now to “5G”, it conceives of
each stage as a new “generation”. Tis could be taken to imply that each iteration of the mobile phone network is completely new and, with its birth, the previous generation is put to rest. Tis works well as marketing, allowing the industry to build
great excitement around each new generation – excitement which drives sales of replacement handsets and the infrastructure required to support them. But, how helpful is it to developers of IoT equipment that must connect to the cloud via a cellular network? And how much does the launch of the next generation of 5G equipment affect embedded device manufacturers, who are in many cases using 2G, 3G or 4G networks to connect their products to the Internet?
Evolution not revolution Tere is no doubt that the introduction of 5G technology has serious implications for makers of IoT devices: 5G technology was developed in part precisely to enable the vision of pervasive networking. In the smart city, for instance, technology architects are forecasting the provision of dense concentrations of billions of IoT devices served by thousands of micro-basestations. It is 5G technology that enables hundreds of thousands of devices to gain Internet access via the same shared basestations. So smart-city technology, in which every lamp-post, traffic light, advertising display panel, bus- or tram-stop and electric-vehicle charging station has its own Internet connection, is an obvious application for 5G. For IoT device makers, this vision for mass deployment of cloud connectivity will be shaping product development programmes. However, let us not be deceived by the marketing ploys of the
mobile phone industry: cellular networking technology does not, in fact, move in huge generational leaps, but in a series of smaller steps, gradually introducing new capabilities and features, proving and refining them, and then embedding them in future iterations. So, for instance, complex antenna designs, known as Multiple In, Multiple Out (MIMO) arrays, a feature of the latest iterations of Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G networks, will come into their own when deployed in 5G infrastructure.
26 November/December 2020
www.electronicsworld.co.uk
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