The Japanese MNO Softbank is taking an active role in trying to bring AI to RAN. In a research story published recently, they explain that AI-RAN integrates AI into mobile networks to enhance performance and enable low-latency, high-security services via distributed AI data centres. This innovative infrastructure supports applications like real-time urban safety monitoring and optimized network throughput. Through the AI-RAN Alliance, SoftBank collaborates with industry leaders to advance technology and create an ecosystem for AI-driven societal and industrial solutions.
This video provides a nice short explanation of what AI-RAN means:
SoftBank's recent developments in AI-RAN technology further its mission to integrate AI with mobile networks, highlighted by the introduction of "AITRAS." This converged solution leverages NVIDIA's Grace Hopper platform and advanced orchestrators to unify vRAN and AI applications, enabling efficient and scalable networks. By collaborating with partners like Red Hat and Fujitsu, SoftBank aims to commercialize AI-RAN globally, addressing the demands of next-generation connectivity. Together, these initiatives align with SoftBank's vision of transforming telecommunications infrastructure to power AI-driven societies. Details are available on SoftBank's page here.
Last month, theNetworkingChannel hosted a webinar looking at 'AI-RAN and Open RAN: Exploring Convergence of AI-Native Approaches in Future Telecommunication Technologies'. The slides have not been shared and the details of the speakers are available here. The webinar is embedded below:
NVIDIA has a lot more technical details available on their blog post here.
TechKnowledge is a series of Technology Stories looking at how technology has evolved over the years and how it will continue to evolve in the future. The series is targeted at youth looking to understand how technology has been evolving and how it will evolve further. It is our intention to make a ten part series but as of yet only four parts are complete.
Part 1: 'Smaller, Faster, Cheaper and More…' looks at how technology has evolved by things getting smaller, faster, cheaper and much more. It investigates Moore’s law and how it has helped create a future technology roadmap.
Part 2: 'Connecting Everything Everywhere…' discusses different connectivity options available to connect various devices, gadgets and appliances to the internet. It highlights the fact that this is just the beginning, and everything that can be connected will eventually get connected.
Part 3: 'Satellites - Our Friends In The Sky…' discusses the fact that they are our friends and helpers in the sky. In discusses how satellites are useful as a connectivity option, how it helps us map and navigate, how we can use location based services, how we can watch broadcast video or listen to broadcast radio, and last but not least, how satellites are helping us observe and monitor the earth.
Part 4: 'Devices and Gadgets - Our Companions and Life Savers…' looks at the fact that we use a variety of electronic devices/gadgets in our everyday lives to make it more convenient, efficient, and even keep us connected. From smartphones and laptops to smart home appliances and wearable tech, these devices simplify tasks, enhance productivity, and provide instant access to information and communication. They help us manage work, stay in touch with loved ones, and access entertainment on the go. Gadgets like fitness trackers promote healthier lifestyles, while others automate household chores, saving time and energy. Overall, the connected devices & gadgets have become essential tools in modern life, blending seamlessly into our routines and transforming how we live and interact.
It's been a while since we created our security tutorial, back in 2018. One of the items we discussed in there were the fake cell towers or the fake base stations. The issues highlighted there still exist as highlighted by AIS CISO, Pepijn Kok at The Telecom Threat Intelligence Summit (TTIS) 2024.
The cyber threat actors exploited GSM authentication vulnerabilities to use fake base stations as part of SMS phishing attacks to steal from real bank accounts. In his talk Pepijn explains how AIS worked with ecosystem partners in Thailand to detect and block these attacks.
The talk described two case studies. The first one was a report from Dec 2022 where certain bank customers and online retail platform users were receiving SMS messages masquerading as the bank or online platform itself (something not typically possible). The messages contained links to malicious content. The second one is a recent case from April 2024 where AIS customers started receiving fake SMS with malicious links. It was obvious in that case that the SMS did not come from the AIS network which triggered AIS to start investigating as they were sure there was a fake base station in operation. The talk describes how in both the scenarios the gangs were caught.
The talk is embedded below:
You can learn more about TTIS here. The video of all the talks from day 1 is here and day 2 is here.
In the GSA 4G/5G FWA Forum Plenary back in June, GSA identified announced service offers using LTE or 5G from 554 operators in 187 countries and territories, and launched services from 477 operators in 175 markets worldwide, as of late 2023. However, digging into these global numbers and the regional picture of operators delivering FWA services using LTE or 5G varies widely.
The GSA 4G-5G FWA Forum Plenary brought together operators from the MEA and APAC regions to identify and share their best practice fixed wireless access use cases. The webinar is embedded below:
The FWA Market June 2024 report is available here to download.
Over the years we have made a lot of tutorials explaining mobile wireless technology (list here). Here is another one that came up as part of a discussion where many experienced telecom engineers seemed to be struggling explaining what telecoms mean. Slides and video embedded below:
Peter Rysavy is the president of Rysavy Research LLC, the consulting firm that he has led since 1993, focusing on computer networking, wireless technology, and mobile computing. Recently he did a presentation for Oregon Chapter of IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc). The abstract of the talk states:
Wireless communication is fundamental to our digital society, with radio spectrum the key enabling resource. Understanding the critical role of spectrum provides deep insight into how wireless technologies function and how they will evolve. This enlightening talk delves into the ingenious advancements in Wi-Fi and cellular networks to harness spectrum, including increasing efficiency, deploying new bands, aggregating channels, and dynamically sharing spectrum. Despite huge progress, formidable challenges remain in meeting soaring demands for capacity, achieving global harmonization, and ensuring coexistence with existing services.
Key takeaways:
There is increasing demand for wireless spectrum from technologies like WiFi and 5G cellular networks, but the amount of usable spectrum is finite.
Different spectrum bands have tradeoffs between coverage, capacity, and ability to support new technologies. The mid-band spectrum between 2 and 6 GHz is well-suited for 5G.
Technologies are evolving to use spectrum more efficiently through techniques like carrier aggregation, advanced modulation, massive MIMO, and puncturing in WiFi 7.
The US lacks a clear long-term national spectrum strategy and roadmap, putting it at a disadvantage compared to countries like China, which plan spectrum allocations years in advance.
Spectrum sharing is complex with no one-size-fits-all solution, though approaches like beamforming, dynamic spectrum access databases, and sensing show promise if challenges are addressed.
Harmonizing spectrum use globally through conferences helps drive economies of scale in devices and supports roaming, though the US diverges in some bands like 6 GHz assigned solely to WiFi.
Critical infrastructure requires precise timing to operate. This reliance makes the infrastructure vulnerable to disruptions in timing that can be either intentional or unintentional. Intentional disruptions can be caused by GNSS jamming or spoofing or network attacks.. Unintentional disruptions are usually caused by equipment failures or acts of nature.
Back in April 2022, Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) hosted a webinar on this topic, a precursor to the Annual Workshop on Synchronization and Timing Systems (WSTS). The webinar featured top industry experts delivering insight into the latest techniques for adding resilience and robustness to timing infrastructure. It covered the most critical topics in timing resilience, including:
Redundancy
Holdover
Management
Monitoring
Alternative reference time sources
Examples address networks used for critical industry applications such as:
Power grids
Telecommunications
Finance systems
Broadcast/media
The video of the webinar as follows:
Experts participating in the webinar and their presentations are as follows:
I have been asked about the UE Assistance Information (UAI) RRC message a few times before. Generally I have always pointed people back to the LTE/5G specifications but here is a concise video that the telecoms technology training company Mpirical have shared recently:
If you want to dig further into details then please see the RRC specifications: 36.331 for LTE and 38.331 for 5G.
Over the years I have added quite a few short tutorials from Mpirical on this blog, do check them out below.
I have been meaning to share this video/presentation by Patrick Scannell for quite some time now. Pat Scannell is a technology and telecom industry consultant who is a world leader on 5G and the co-evolution of technology and cognition, specializing in innovation and commercialization of emerging technologies across a wide range of industries.
At the IEEE International Symposium on Digital Privacy and Social Media 2022, Pat gave a talk titled 'The Return of Magic: Technological Complexification'. The outline of the talk says:
Today’s tech is characterized by rapidly accelerating complexity, both in the densely layered technology itself but also in the increasingly hyper-specialized people who are needed to build it. But each person who builds it, and certainly most people who use tech, have a diminishing ability to understand how the whole of the techno-ecological niche we have created for ourselves (what I term ‘the return of magic’).
The case for this argument is outlined and then shows that the problems associated with this phenomenon are amplified by an inherent characteristic of a complex system - the lack of ability to know, understand, and predict system outcomes.
Against the broad scope of human history, the result of these forces could represent a reversal of a trend that started in the Enlightenment, but it also has very specific and actionable consequences on the day-to-day work of the tech industry and on Digital Privacy of our customers.
This talk aims to frame the problems, but in a constructive way that allows us to begin to build and adopt better technology, which could scaffold a better human experience.
5G Forum, South Korea organises Mobile Korea conference every year. Mobile Korea 2023 had two conferences within it, '6G Global', looking at 'Beyond Connectivity and New Possibilities', and '5G Vertical Summit', looking at 'Leading to Sustainable Society with 5G'.
I often complain about how organisations working in 6G often lack social networks skills, in this case, even the website is not very user friendly and doesn't contain a lot of details. Full marks for uploading the videos on YouTube though.
Anyway, here are the videos and presentations that were shared from the summit:
Opening + Keynote Session - Moderator : LEE, HyeonWoo, DanKook University
Standardization and Technical Trend for 6G, SungHyun CHOI, Samsung Research (video, presentation)
Session 1 : 6G Global Trend - Moderator : JaeHoon CHUNG, LG Electronics Inc.
Thoughts on standardization and Industry priorities to ensure timely market readiness for 6G, Sari NIELSEN, Nokia (video, presentation)
On the convergence route for 6G, Wen TONG, Huawei (video, presentation)
The Path from 5G to 6G: Vision and Technology, Edward G. TIEDMANN, Qualcomm Technologies (video, presentation)
Shaping 6G – Technology and Services, Bo HAGERMAN, Ericsson (video, presentation)
Government Session
Keynote : Korea's 6G R&D Promotion Strategy, KyeongRae CHO, Ministry of Science and ICT (video, presentation)
Session 2 : 6G Global Collaboration - Moderator : Juho LEE, Samsung Electronics
6G R&D and promotion in Japan, Kotaro KUWAZU, B5GPC (video, presentation)
Technology evolution toward beyond 5G and 6G, Charlie ZHANG, Samsung Research (video, presentation)
AI-Native RAN and Air Interface : Promises and Challenges, Balaji Raghothaman, Keysight (video, presentation)
Enabling 6G Research through Rapid Prototyping and TestLEE, SeYong, (NI) (video, presentation)
Global Collaborative R&D Activities for Advanced Radio Technologies, JaeHoon CHUNG, LG Electronics (video, presentation)
International research collaboration – key to a sustainable 6G road, Thomas HAUSTEIN, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (video, presentation)
6G as Cellular Network 2.0: A Networked Computing Perspective, KyungHan LEE, Seoul National University (video, presentation)
Towards a Sustainable 6G, Marcos KATZ, University of Oulu (video, presentation)
Pannel Discussion : Roles of Public Domain in 6G R&D - Moderator : HyeonWoo LEE, DanKook University
6G R&D Direction and Introduction of IITP, SungHo CHOI, IITP (video, presentation)
NICT's role for Beyond 5G R&D, Iwao HOSAKO, NICT (video, presentation)
6G Smart Networks and Services JU: R&D for 6G in Europe, Alexandros KALOXYLOS, 6GIA (video, presentation)
Taiwan 6G Vision and R&D ActivitiesSHIEH, Shin-Lin, ITRI (video, presentation)
Session 3 : 6G Global Mega Project - Moderator: YoungJo KO, ETRI
Sub-THz band wireless transmission and access technology for 6G Tbps data rate, JuYong LEE, KAIST (video, presentation)
The post Shannon Era: Towards Semantic, Goal-Oriented and Reconfigurable Intelligent Environments aided 6G communications, Emilio CALVANESE STRINATI, CEA Leti (video, presentation)
Demonstration of 1.4 Tbits wireless transmission using OAM multiplexing technology in the sub-THz band, DooHwan LEE, NTT Corporation (video, presentation)
Latest 6G research progress in China, Zhiqin WANG, CAICT (video, presentation)
If there are no links in video/presentation than it hasn't been shared.
At the Brooklyn 6G Summit (B6GS) 2023, top tier economist Dr. Jeff Shen from BlackRock, presented a talk from the industry perspective of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and investment. Jeff Shen, PhD, Managing Director, is Co-CIO and Co-Head of Systematic Active Equity (SAE) at BlackRock. He is a member of the BlackRock Global Operating Committee, BlackRock Systematic (BSYS) Management Committee and the BlackRock Asian Middle Eastern & Allies Network (AMP) Executive Committee.
How are firms reacting to AI? From 'ICT Industry Trends in the coming decades' by Jeff Shen, BlackRock at #B6GS - I am guessing the peak of mobile mention was the peak 5G hype in 2015/16. Hopefully the industry is now much wiser and won't repeat the 6G hype. pic.twitter.com/xjEiDtmSUZ
In his talk he covered the history of how and where AI has been traditionally used and how the thinking around AI has changed over the last few decades. He then presented his view on if AI is just a fad or it's more than that. To illustrate the fact, he provided an example of how Generative AI market is expected to grow from $40 Billion in 2022 to $1.3 Trillion in 2032.
There are many challenges that AI faces that one should be aware of; namely regulation, cyber threats and ethical concerns. In the US, AI touches the entire economy, from legal to healthcare. In their quarterly reporting, firms are now discussing AI and the larger tech companies are not afraid to grow inorganically in order to get more exposure to the trend.
You can watch the whole of his talk embedded below, courtesy of IEEE Tv.
Private Networks has been a hot topic for a while now. We made a technical introductory video which has over 13K views while its slides have over 25K views. The Private Networks blog that officially started in April is now getting over 2K views a month.
In addition, there are quite a few questions and enquiries that I receive on them on a regular basis. With this background, it makes sense to add these Introductory video series by Firecell in a post. Their 'Private Networks Tutorial Series' playlist, aiming to demystify private networks, is embedded below:
The playlist has five videos at the moment, hopefully they will add more:
Introduction to different kinds of mobile networks: public, private and hybrid networks
Ralf Kreher explained EPS Fallback mechanism in his post earlier, which is still quite popular. This post contains couple of videos that also explain this procedure.
The first is a very short and simple tutorial from Mpirical, embedded below:
The second is a slightly technical presentation explaining how 5G system can redirect the 5G VoNR capable device to the 4G system to continue for IMS based VoLTE voice call.
Since the industry realised how the 5G Network Architecture will look like, Network Slicing has been touted as the killer business case that will allow the mobile operators to generate revenue from new sources.
According to global technology intelligence firm ABI Research, 5G slicing revenue is expected to grow from US$309 million in 2022 to approximately US$24 billion in 2028, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 106%.
“5G slicing adoption falls into two main categories. One, there is no connectivity available. Two, there is connectivity, but there is not sufficient capacity, coverage, performance, or security. For the former, both private and public organizations are deploying private network slices on a permanent and ad hoc basis,” highlights Don Alusha, 5G Core and Edge Networks Senior Analyst at ABI Research. The second scenario is mostly catered by private networks today, a market that ABI Research expects to grow from US$3.6 billion to US$109 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 45.8%. Alusha continues, “A sizable part of this market can be converted to 5G slicing. But first, the industry should address challenges associated with technology and commercial models. On the latter, consumers’ and enterprises’ appetite to pay premium connectivity prices for deterministic and tailored connectivity services remains to be determined. Furthermore, there are ongoing industry discussions on whether the value that comes from 5G slicing can exceed the cost required to put together the underlying slicing ecosystem.”
I recently published IDC's first forecast on 5G network slicing services opportunity. Slicing should be an important tool for telcos to create new services, but it still remains many years away in most markets. A very complicated undertakinghttps://t.co/GNY4xiLFBV
Earlier this year, Daryl Schoolar - Research Director at IDC tackled this topic in his blog post:
5G network slicing, part of the 3GPP standards developed for 5G, allows for the creation of multiple virtual networks across a single network infrastructure, allowing enterprises to connect with guaranteed low latency. Using principles behind software-defined network and network virtualization, slicing allows the mobile operator to provide differentiated network experience for different sets of end users. For example, one network slice could be configured to support low latency, while another slice is configured for high download speeds. Both slices would run across the same underlying network infrastructure, including base stations, transport network, and core network.
Network slicing differs from private mobile networks, in that network slicing runs on the public wide area network. Private mobile networks, even when offered by the mobile operator, use infrastructure and spectrum dedicated to the end user to isolate the customer’s traffic from other users.
5G network slicing is a perfect candidate for future business connectivity needs. Slicing provides a differentiated network experience that can better match the customers performance requirements than traditional mobile broadband. Until now, there has been limited mobile network performance customization outside of speeds. 5G network slicing is a good example of telco service offerings that meet future of connectivity requirements. However, 5G network slicing also highlights the challenges mobile operators face with transformation in their pursuit of remaining relevant.
For 5G slicing to have broad commercial availability, and to provide a variety of performance options, several things need to happen first.
Operators need to deploy 5G Standalone (SA) using the new 5G mobile core network. Currently most operators use the 5G non-standalone (NSA) architecture that relies on the LTE mobile core. It might be the end of 2023 before the majority of commercial 5G networks are using the SA mode.
Spectrum is another hurdle that must be overcome. Operators still make most of their revenue from consumers, and do not want to compromise the consumer experience when they start offering network slicing. This means operators need more spectrum. In the U.S., among the three major mobile operators, only T-Mobile currently has a nationwide 5G mid-band spectrum deployment. AT&T and Verizon are currently deploying in mid-band, but that will not be completed until 2023.
5G slicing also requires changes to the operator’s business and operational support systems (BSS/OSS). Current BSS/OSS solutions were not designed to support the increased parameters those systems were designed to support.
And finally, mobile operators still need to create the business propositions around commercial slicing services. Mobile operators need to educate businesses on the benefits of slicing and how slicing supports their different connectivity requirements. This could involve mobile operators developing industry specific partnerships to reach different business segments. All these things take time to be put into place.
Because of the enormity of the tasks needed to make 5G network slicing a commercial success, IDC currently has a very conservative outlook for this service through 2026. IDC believes it will be 2023 until there is general commercial availability of 5G network slicing. The exception is China, which is expected to have some commercial offerings in 2022 as it has the most mature 5G market. Even then, it will take until 2025 before global revenues from slicing exceeds a billion U.S. dollars. In 2026 IDC forecasts slicing revenues will be approximately $3.2 billion. However, over 80% of those revenues will come out of China.
The 'Outspoken Industry Analyst' Dean Bubley believes that Network Slicing is one of the worst strategic errors made by the mobile industry, since the catastrophic choice of IMS for communications applications. In a LinkedIn post he explains:
At best, slicing is an internal toolset that might allow telco operations or product teams (or their vendors) to manage their network resources. For instance, it could be used to separate part of a cell's capacity for FWA, and dynamically adjust that according to demand. It might be used as an "ingredient" to create a higher class of service for enterprise customers, for instance for trucks on a highway, or as part of an "IoT service" sold by MNOs. Public safety users might have an expensive, artisanal "hand-carved" slice which is almost a separate network. Maybe next-gen MVNOs.
(I'm talking proper 3GPP slicing here - not rebranded QoS QCI classes, private APNs, or something that looks like a VLAN, which will probably get marketed as "slices")
But the idea that slicing is itself a *product*, or that application developers or enterprises will "buy a slice" is delusional.
Firstly, slices will be dependent on [good] coverage and network control. A URLLC slice likely won't work reliably indoors, underground, in remote areas, on a train, on a neutral-host network, or while roaming. This has been a basic failure of every differentiated-QoS monetisation concept for many years, and 5G's often-higher frequencies make it worse, not better.
Secondly, there is no mature machinery for buying, selling, testing, supporting. price, monitoring slices. No, the 5G Network Exposure Function won't do it all. I haven't met a Slice salesperson yet, or a Slice-procurement team.
Thirdly, a "local slice" of a national 5G network will run headlong into a battle with the desire for separate private/dedicated local 5G networks, which may well be cheaper and easier. It also won't work well with the enterprise's IT/OT/IP domains, out of the box.
Also there's many challenges getting multi-operator slices, device OS links to slice APIs, slice "boundary controllers" between operators, aligning RAN and core slices, regulatory questionmarks and much more.
There are lots of discussion in the comments section that may be of interest to you, here.
My belief is that we will see lots of interesting use cases with slicing in public networks but it will be difficult to monetise. The best networks will manage to do it to create some plans with guaranteed rates and low latency. It would remain to be see whether they can successfully monetise it well enough.
For technical people and newbies, there are lots of Network Slicing resources on this blog (see related posts 👇). Here is another recent video from Mpirical:
I recently participated in a webinar, discussing one of my favourite topics, 5G Standalone (5G SA). If you do not know about 5G SA, you may want to quickly watch my short and simple video on the topic here.
Last year I blogged about GSA's 5G Standalone webinar here. That time we were discussing why 5G SA is taking time to deliver, it was sort of a similar story this time. Things are changing though and you will see a lot more of these standalone networks later this year and even early next year.
The slides of the webinar are available here and the video is embedded below:
Here are some of my thoughts on why 5G SA is taking much longer than most people anticipated:
5G SA will force operators to move to 5G core which is a completely new architecture. The transition to this is taking much longer than expected, especially if there are a lot of legacy services that needs to be supported.
Many operators are moving towards converged core with 4G & 5G support to simply the core. This transition is taking long.
For taking complete advantage of 5G architecture, cloud native implementation is required. Some operators have already started the transition to cloud native but others are lagging.
5G SA speeds will be lower than NSA speeds hence some operators who don't have a lot of mid-band spectrum are delaying their 5G SA rollouts.
Many operators have managed to reduce their latency as they start to move to edge datacentres, hence the urgency for 5G standalone has reduced.
Most operators do not see any new revenue opportunities because of 5G SA, hence they want to be completely ready before rolling out 5G SA
Finally, you may hear a lot about not enough devices supporting 5G SA but that's not the device manufacturers views. See this tweet from GSA 👇
With 5G SA networks now being launched, GSA is already aware of 842 announced devices with claimed support for 5G SA, up 202% from 278 at the end of 2020.
Dr. Seppo Virtanen is an Associate Professor in Cyber Security Engineering and Vice Head of Department of Computing, the University of Turku, Finland. At 5G Hack The Mall 2022, he presented a talk on Cybersecurity and 5G.
In the talk he covered the following topics:
Cybersecurity and Information Security
The CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability) Model
Achieving the goals of the CIA model
Intrusion and Detection
Intrusion detection, mitigation and aftercare
Smart Environments
Abstraction levels
Cybersecurity in smart environments
Cyber security concerns in smart environments
Security concerns in Smart Personal Spaces
Security concerns in Smart Rooms and Buildings
Security concerns of a participant in a smart environment
Cyber Security Concerns in Smart Environments
Cyber Security in the 5G context
Drivers for 5G security
Securing 5G
This video embedded below is a nice introduction to cybersecurity and how it overlaps with 5G:
People involved with mobile technology know the challenges with uplink for any generation of mobile network. With increasing data rates in 4G and 5G, the issue has become important as most of the speeds are focused on download but upload speeds are quite poor.
Speedtests are still the 5G killer app (#5GKillerApp) right now. Fantastic speeds from Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband (UWB) #5GBuiltRight. Upload speeds 250+ Mbps but notice how to hold the phone right to get these speeds 🤫https://t.co/DS18IOw8AW
People who follow us across our channels know of many of the presentations we share across them from various sources, not just ours. One such presentation by Peter Schmidt looked at the uplink in details. In fact we recommend following him on Twitter if you are interested in technical details and infrastructure.
The lecture highlights the influences on the mysterious part of mobile communications - sources of interference in the uplink and their impact on mobile communication as well as practices for detecting sources of RF interference.
The field strength bar graph of a smartphone (the downlink reception field strength) is only half of the truth when assessing a mobile network coverage. The other half is the uplink, which is largely invisible but highly sensitive to interference, the direction from the end device to the base stations. In this lecture, sources of uplink interference, their effects and measurement and analysis options will be explained.
Cellular network uplink is essential for mobile communication, but nobody can really see it. The uplink can be disrupted by jammers, repeaters, and many other RF sources. When it is jammed, mobile communication is limited. I will show what types of interference sources can disrupt the uplink and what impact this has on cellular usage and how interference hunting can be done.
First I explain the necessary level symmetry of the downlink (from the mobile radio base station - eNodeB to the end device) and the uplink (from the end device back to the eNodeB). Since the transmission power of the end device and eNodeB are very different, I explain the technical background to achieving symmetry. In the following I will explain the problems and possibilities when measuring uplink signals on the eNodeB, it is difficult to look inside the receiver. In comparison, the downlink is very easy to measure, you can see the bars on your smartphone or you can use apps that provide detailed field strength information etc. However, the uplink remains largely invisible. However, if this is disturbed on the eNodeB, the field strength bars on the end device say nothing. I will present a way of observing which some end devices bring on board or can be read out of the chipset with APPs. The form in which the uplink can be disrupted, the effects on communication and the search for uplink sources of disruption will complete the presentation. I will also address the problem of 'passive intermodulation' (PIM), a (not) new source of interference in base station antenna systems, its assessment, measurement and avoidance.
The slides are available here. The original lecture was in German, a dubbed video is embedded below:
If you know of some other fantastic resources that we can share with our audience, please feel free to add them in the comments.
We have looked at what we mean by cloud-native in an earlier post here. Recently we also looked at edge-native infrastructure here. While we have been debating between cloud and edge for a while, in a new presentation (embedded below), Gorkem Yigit, Principal Analyst, Analysys Mason argues that the new, distributed IT/OT applications will drive the shift from cloud-native to edge-native infrastrcuture.
The talk by Gorkem on '5G and edge network clouds: industry progress and the shape of the new market' from Layer123 World Congress 2021 is as follows:
A blog post by ADVA has a nice short summary of the image on the top that was also presented at a webinar earlier. The following is an extract from that blog post:
The diagram compares hyperscale (“cloud-native infrastructure”) on the left with hyper-localized (“edge-native infrastructure”) on the right.
Computing: The traditional hyperscale cloud is built on centralized and pooled resources. This approach enables unlimited scalability. In contrast, compute at the edge has limited scalability, and may require additional equipment to grow applications. But the initial cost at the edge is correspondingly low, and grows linearly with demand. That compares favorably to the initial cost for a hyperscale data center, which may be tens of millions of dollars.
Location sensitivity and latency: Users of the hyperscale data center assume their workloads can run anywhere, and latency is not a major consideration. In contrast, hyper-localized applications are tied to a particular location. This might be due to new laws and regulations on data sovereignty that require that information doesn’t leave the premises or country. Or it could be due to latency restrictions as with 5G infrastructure. In either case, shipping data to a remote hyperscale data center is not acceptable.
Hardware: Modern hyperscale data centers are filled with row after row of server racks – all identical. That ensures good prices from bulk purchases, as well as minimal inventory requirements for replacements. The hyper-localized model is more complicated. Each location must be right-sized, and supply-chain considerations come into play for international deployments. There also may be a menagerie of devices to manage.
Connectivity: Efficient use of hyperscale data centers depends on reliable and high-bandwidth connectivity. That is not available for some applications. Or they may be required to operate when connectivity is lost. An interesting example of this case is data processing in space, where connectivity is slow and intermittent.
Cloud stack: Hyperscale and hyper-localized deployments can host VMs and containers. In addition, hyper-localized edge clouds can host serverless applications, which are ideal for small workloads.
Security: Hyperscale data centers use a traditional perimeter-based security model. Once you are in, you are in. Hyper-localized deployments can provide a zero-trust model. Each site is secured as with a hyperscale model, but each application can also be secured based on specific users and credentials.
You don’t have to choose upfront
So, which do you pick? Hyperscale or hyper-localized?
The good news is that you can use both as needed, if you make some good design choices.
Cloud-native: You should design for cloud-native portability. That means using technologies such as containers and a micro-services architecture.
Cloud provider supported edge clouds: Hyperscale cloud providers are now supporting local deployments. These tools enable users to move workloads to different sites based on the criteria discussed above. Examples include IBM Cloud Satellite, Amazon Outposts, Google Anthos, Azure Stack and Azure Arc.
You can also learn more about this topic in the Analysys Mason webinar, “From cloud-native to edge-native computing: defining the cloud platform for new use cases.”. You can also download the slides from there after registration.
