Understand everything about 5g, this technology that is about to change our lives Essay

Understand everything about 5G, this technology that is about to change our livesThe 2018 edition of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, ​​the global telephony show, should finally mark the end of the "blah blah" and the entry into the concrete about the 5G, next generation network as promising as it is ambitious.BARCELONA, Spain. - It no longer holds the projection, but the certainty: within two years, more than 20 billion connected objects - three times more than the number of human beings - will run at full speed on our beautiful planet . Autonomous cars, connected health objects, augmented reality glasses, robots ... Our network will have to follow the rhythm, and especially to be extremely reliable.Fortunately, we already know by which way all this happy bazaar will be possible: the 5G, which promises to be much more than a simple improvement of our current mobile network. As specified by ARCEP in a report of March 2017 , this new generation network is first and foremost a set of technologies that will arrive gradually and cohabit with 4G, Wi-Fi links or satellite relays. "The idea that is beginning to be formed behind the 5G concept is that it does not correspond to a simple increase of flows, as it has been the case for previous generations", can read.The 5G does not correspond to a simple increase in flows, as it has been the case for previous generationsHowever, at a time when many areas in France are still not covered by the 4G network , it is still difficult to consider the 5G as a concrete and concrete technology. Some of us do not even have a clue what it is. "5G" Oh la la, I do not even know what's the difference between 3G and 4G ", launched me an acquaintance when I ventured on the subject. And this is normal: the standards of mobile telephony are far from being accessible to the general public. But let's try to see a little more clearly.Concretely, the 5G, we are not thereAlthough the Pyeongchang Olympic Winter Games are currently a full-scale test of 5G technology , it is unfortunately not tomorrow that we will be able to watch our 4K streaming films in the buses of our major French cities. First, because compatible smartphones will not reach the international market until 2019. The first 5G terminals, expected later this year, will be mainly wireless hotspot boxes . The marketing of the first 5G offers in France, it is planned for 2020, but Orange leaves more margin by planning the deployment of the network from 2020 to 2022.Secondly because the various players in the sector - network equipment manufacturers, operators, manufacturers and other relevant bodies - will have to agree on the details of this commissioning. The Mobile World Congress, which opens this Monday in Barcelona, ​​should just be an opportunity for all this small world to discuss and advance a little more on the subject. The 2017 edition of the show had also seen Intel, Qualcomm, Huawei and other giants of the mobile industry try to accelerate their efforts to create the first standard, finally formalized last December .The good news is that the different demonstrations have shown that 5G works. And that's not bad.A major revolutionFor sure, the 5G will mess up a lot of things. So much so that we are already talking about it as the keystone of the next industrial revolution. At CES last January, Stephen Mollenkopf, the boss of Qualcomm, said that 5G would be "the biggest upheaval since electricity"," said CNET . Such a comparison is of interest.It is true that its promises let us see a profoundly different relationship to the technologies that surround us. In broad outline, here is what she will bring:Fiber equivalent rates , around at least 100 Mbit / s on average perceived by the user, and up to 20 Gbit / s, at least in theory. That said, the real challenge of 5G is not really down to raw speed. A reduced latency , which happens to be the essential improvement to the advent of the autonomous car or robotics in the field of health. Today, the data transmission delay in 4G + approaches 10 milliseconds. In 5G, this could be reduced to less than a millisecond. When it comes to a vehicle to avoid a road accident or a robot to carry out surgery remotely, these 9 milliseconds will make all the difference. Connectivity everywhere, all the time , thanks to increased network coverage in commercial and tourist areas or public places, and to a density of connection increased: more than one million devices per square kilometer can be connected at the same time time. What leave a good room for maneuver to the Internet of Things and the rise of the so-called "smart city". Energy savings , since the 5G should preserve the batteries of our devices. In theory, our smartphones, whose lithium-ion batteries are beginning to reach their limits, should now be able to hold up to 3 days without charge, and some small connected objects would be able to stay in working order over ... 15 years.Big advantages ... but also a lot of disadvantagesAll of this is very technical, so we will try to keep it simple. While 4G uses frequency bands below 6 GHz, the 5G, it will operate millimeter waves, whose frequency is between 30 and 300 GHz. Until now, these bands were used globally only in the military field. They have several advantages: first that of being free, the frequencies used by the 4G are already well saturated. Then, to be particularly adapted to very high-speed.It will be necessary to multiply the relay antennas ... and the population will have to accept themBut they do not have only good sides, do you think well: they have unfortunately a shorter range, because the higher the frequency, the less good is the range. It will then be necessary to resort to what are called smallcells , namely small antennas connected to a kind of big "mother antenna" (itself installed outside major cities) and concealable in street furniture. Another technology will also come in support: MIMO, for "Multiple-Input Multiple Output", which again consists of hundreds of small antennas capable of offering much higher flows while saving energy."The range of smallcells being very short - a few hundred meters at most - it will be necessary to multiply them, so the population will have to accept them"," warns Michel Corriou, head of network and safety at the Institute for Technological Research. b <> com. Knowing that the impact of relay antennas on health and the environment is still debated, the prospect of their massive increase is already causing concern. Last September, a hundred and seventy scientists from 37 countries had requested a moratorium on the deployment of the 5G "until studies (...) serious and independent were carried out prior to any placing on the market. "With 5G, the end of "network neutrality"?Finally, you should know that 5G will rely on the principle of slicing , which consists in "cutting" the network to allocate dedicated resources by type of use, and thus give priority to certain services. "All our devices do not necessarily need the same resources, for example, an autonomous car must have the guarantee of optimal latency, where it will be necessary to book a smartphone a good flow"," says Michel Corriou.If the idea seems clever (note that slicing has already developed a little with 4G), it raises several questions: a network made of 'slices' can not promise absolute security. While solutions are already on the table - enhanced authentication, network virtualization - but for Michel Corriou, the user will necessarily be informed of risk levels. "Are the operators going to be ready to signal to their client that a level of security is low at a specific time?", He wondered.Second blurred area: "If the network is broken up, will a reliable slot be allocated to all connected vehicles, or just to those of BMW, for example? we do not have that kind of details yet. " If this last case comes to reality, we could almost speak of "end of network neutrality". Orange is in any case already out of the wood : for the French operator, the 5G is hardly compatible with the usual regulations on net neutrality ...One thing is certain: there is still a lot of work to do before the 5G comes to upset our daily lives.Something to add ? Say it in comment.