Shaping up for 5G

by Anoop Gangadharan, Yokogawa Europe

With  every generation of technology, new opportunities and challenges open up. It is no different with the imminent arrival of 5G. While the US won the 4G race, it is China that is sprinting ahead with 5G as Japan, Korea and Europe play catchup as the explosion of mobile, wearable and connected devices, IoT and digital transformation across industries intensifies. Thus 5G will have an enormous impact on our lives as it goes beyond mobile broadband to enabling smart cities, robotics, autonomous vehicles and fosters innovation in healthcare, agriculture and education.

What improvements can we expect ?

To facilitate the demands of driverless vehicles, virtual and augmented realities, cloud computing and the IoT architectures, real-time health care etc,  the 5G network promises improvements such as :

Increased data transmission speed, to support Ultra HD video streaming and new/future online services requiring high data transfer rates

Reduced latency of data transmission in order to have services running in real time.

Reduced Operating Expenses of the network, reachable by reducing the power consumption needed by the network to be operative

With 5G,  latency is expected to drop to 1 millisecond and once we are able to communicate at near real-time over a network in , proximity will no longer matter. However, a lot of infrastructural, regulatory and cost challenges need to be overcome before a doctor in Berlin, for instance, performs surgery on a patient in Brussels. Communication service providers will need to invest billions in infrastructure to enable 5G including more antennas, base stations and fibre-optic cables, before 5G can be widely adopted. Governments and regulatory bodies will need to monitor advances and make it easier for telecom companies to invest in upgrading technology and enact policies to enable new revenue models for data monetization and content management. Additionally, new regulatory and liability considerations for advanced automated features such as remote surgery, remote healthcare, vehicle-to-vehicle communication and public safety need to be accounted for.

Ready for the revolution ?

The introduction of a 5G network introduction is a massive infrastructural change that is not simply a not only replacement of “old” 4G transmitters and receivers with new ones but but also changing the network topology itself. However it is still more of an evolutionary step that will supplement the existing 4G network. The parallel operation of both technologies will enable higher capacities and faster network speeds in the future. There will be no obligation on private end users to purchase new devices. The LTE network (4G) is an integral part of 5G and as such will naturally continue to be operated and available in the future.

However, it is a significant big step for the growth of the Telecommunication Industry. New fiber cable deployments and new communication systems installation means new jobs for devices manufacturers as well as for infrastructure builders. From an infrastructure standpoint, communication companies will need to increase the number of antennas deployed in the territory. Each antenna will have lower power consumption because it will need to cover a more little area (compared to the area covered by 4G antennas). At the same time, the distance traveled by the data in the air from the antenna to the user device (e.g. smartphone) will be shorter, hence the latency of data transfer will be shorter. 5G antennas will be fed by fiber optic cables (FTTA – Fiber To The Antenna) in which data can flow with very high speed and negligible latency values.

Evaluating the network

More antennas around us, better distributed in the territory, means more fiber deployed in the territory which in turn requires measurement and evaluation of the network and its participants with parameters such as :

optical distance – to elements like splices, connectors , splitters multiplexers etc and to faults and end of fiber

losses / optical return losses / reflectance on splices and connectors , ORL of link or section, total fiber attenuation etc

Optical Time Domain Reflectometers (OTDR) are the measurement instruments used for measuring such parameters and evaluating the integrity of fiber optic cables. Fiber testing is vital to provide confidence that the network is optimized to deliver reliable robust services without faults.The OTDR instruments fit for purpose may be :

a low cost  version with 2 wavelengths and low dynamic range, which will be used by installers to test the last mile of the network: from the street cabinet to the customer apartment in the buildings or from the street cabinet up to the antenna up to the pole

an advanced version with 3 wavelengths, able to measure over splitters and with higher dynamic range to test the network from the telecom operator central office up to the street cabinet

Embarking on the next generation

2020 is the year that 5G is expected to become commercially viable as  global carriers have started 5G speed trials. However turning the 5G promise into impactful human experiences remains a challenge. Many infrastructural, regulatory and cost challenges need to be resolved before the low-latency capabilities of 5G can open up a new world of possibilities. The telecom industry will need to lead the charge to shape the future of homes, transportation, healthcare business and industry as the 5G promise into impactful human experiences that will . braces itself for the infrastructural changesDeveloped cities will be the first to experience 5G, as rural areas currently lack the infrastructure and it will take years before the whole world is connected. However, commitments from the world’s largest telecom companies to deliver on the promise is encouraging.