Cars on call and free wifi on tap: All change for the 5G world

A future where nobody owns a car, where mobile telephone calls are free, where people have access to ultra-high-speed internet connections wherever they are, from the most remote rural location to the most advanced cities on earth. These are just some of the changes which we will see as a result of the advent of 5G communications technology, according to Barry Lunn, chief executive of Irish Times Innovation Award winner Arralis.

The Arralis millimetre wave technology, with its space and terrestrial communications applications, is right at the heart of this revolution, according to Lunn.

“5G is the last G”, he says. “That’s been my thesis for a long time. Millimetre wave technology is going to dominate the next wave of communications and the only way is up. You’re going to see the space companies coming down to eat the terrestrial lunch of the established communications providers.”

Cellular network

This will happen because of the very nature of 5G communications. Unlike 4G and its predecessors, the extremely high speed and long-range data capabilities of 5G will not be reliant on networks of large masts and base stations. Indeed, the whole notion of the cellular network will disappear.

“You’re not going to have cells any more,” Lunn points out. “You’re going to have a mesh of nodes which will be on every street corner. Cars will also be nodes, as will devices. As people move around, their connection will be handed over from node to node. People standing near your car might be sharing its connection until you move away. And the nodes will be no bigger than a cigarette pack so people won’t have a problem with them being located at the end of their street.”

The speeds will be fairly unimaginable too, with 15Gb being achievable almost everywhere, and it will be possible to download a 4K quality feature film in less than 20 seconds.

‘Biggest thing since electricity’

"It's not going to be anything like the way we progressed from 2G to 3G to 4G in the past. Qualcomm CEO Stephen Mollenkopf has said that 5G is the biggest thing since electricity and has also said that if 4G was like moving from the third to the fourth floor in a building, 5G is like moving directly to the 60th."

Speed is just one aspect – latency or response time is the critical one. This will be brought down to less than one millisecond –effectively real time. And this is what will make technologies such as autonomous cars possible.

“Everyone is talking about autonomous driving at the moment but we are nowhere near it yet,” says Lunn. “Autonomous cars will have thousands of sensors on board and you will need to process massive amounts of data to control them safely. It would be very inefficient to have cars driving around with supercomputers on board, so the data processing is going to have to happen elsewhere. This is where 5G comes in. It will be needed to meet the vastly increased requirement for communications capacity.”

Satellites

And this is where the space companies come in. According to Lunn, a major component of the global 5G network will be mega-constellations of thousands of satellites in low earth orbit which will be capable of delivering connectivity almost everywhere on the surface of the earth. Existing terrestrial providers will still exist, of course, but the business model will change radically.

“There will be free wifi everywhere,” says Lunn. “We won’t pay for mobile calls any more. We will pay for services using apps on our phones. We won’t own cars, we will use an app to order an autonomous car to pick us up when we need it. We will mix and match different modes of public and private transport as appropriate. The biggest impact will be on rural communities. It will be a huge leveller. Look what mobile telephony is doing for developing world countries at the moment. 5G could have the same impact on rural communities across the world.”

For the providers like the telcos and the space companies, revenues will come from the services such as autonomous car companies paying for the use of their networks. For Arralis, Lunn sees a vast market for the company’s highly advanced 94GHz radar chipset. “They will be used on the individual satellites as well as on the nodes on streets, on car roofs and so on,” he says. “We are offering a plug-and-play solution where engineers can easily use our products to deliver the connectivity they need.”