Five Breakthrough Practices for Future 5G Capabilities

【51CTO.com Quick Translation】At the 2019 Mobile World Congress, one technology attracted more attention than the others: 5G. 5G made headlines at this MWC conference. From Qualcomm's announcement that it will launch a batch of 5G devices in the next 90 days to Huawei's dazzling new 5G foldable phone, everyone is enthusiastic about 5G. Because some technologies are in the process of digital transformation and advancement, they need 5G to be launched on a large scale. Indeed, in the digital transformation and upgrading, it depends on other related technologies to catch up. 5G is what the next development has been looking forward to.

[[259413]]

Smart Factory

Did you know that smart factories already exist with Industry 4.0? Smart factories already exist, but 5G will play a key role in their continued development. Going forward, the manufacturing process will no longer be limited to the factory floor, but will run through the entire product lifecycle from design and development to sales. Customer needs will be fed back to designers in real time. Products can be automatically matched to the desired location due to weather changes and increased customer demand. When you shop online, the inventory displayed will exactly match the data from the local physical store! With the magic of connected devices and the Internet of Things, 5G will help smart factories do amazing things. That's why the manufacturing industry is spending more than all other industries on investments in the Internet of Things and is expected to continue to do so through 2020.

Not only that, smart factories will increasingly use robots—robots based on artificial intelligence and machine learning to help them make real-time decisions. They will also use more robots to complete dangerous or difficult tasks, helping employees stay healthy and safe. Training will become safer as smart factories introduce augmented reality and virtual reality technologies into training, allowing employees to learn faster and more safely than ever before.

Mixed Reality

The final big advancement that will happen with 5G is mixed reality. We already know that virtual reality and augmented reality can't be fully advanced before 5G is developed. The reason is that for augmented reality and virtual reality to feel like real things - they need to operate at the pace of reality. They can't be slow, or lag, or in any case process less than real time. You might think that some AR and VR applications already exist and work well, but how many people will actually use them?

5G, due to its increased speed and bandwidth, gives AR and VR a lot of room for expansion. At MWC, we saw Microsoft show off their new HoloLens2, which combines physical and digital signals for real-time collaboration. This lightweight headset combines the virtual and real worlds, making frontline employees more efficient by displaying information and interactive data in front of their eyes. Soon, with the connection of 5G networks, we will see an explosion of mixed reality applications, from maps to business applications. The era of virtual reality will eventually arrive, and 5G should also be praised. With 5G, we will see AR and VR appear in our cars, mobile phones and computer screens. It will become a part of daily life.

Self-driving cars

We know a lot about self-driving cars. It seems like we've been talking about them for years, but they still haven't taken off. Well, 5G technology may finally bring them safely to the world. Why? Because so far, 5G is the only technology fast enough for machines to mimic human reactions. It's the only technology reliable enough to keep lives safe. Of course, 5G won't mature overnight. But once it's available everywhere, it will lead to the rapid development of autonomous driving - not just cars, but trucks, buses and planes.

Smart City

How do you feel when you use a slow app or the internet? We hate it and get impatient, and smart cities haven't really taken off yet. We can see that smart cities aren't very smart yet. They have smart neighborhoods - smart parking lots, street lights, and so on. But they haven't reached a level that significantly improves daily life in a sustainable way. Currently, 4G network data is widely used, and it feels like slow internet.

That will change with 5G. Eventually, cities will be able to connect through 5G IoT to do everything from improve trash collection and keep public toilets clean to prevent power outages and improve traffic. Again, 5G is the only technology fast enough to connect so many devices at such high speeds, and it’s well worth it.

Edge computing

It seems that people are still talking about the cloud, but now it is starting to move to the edge. Edge computing, in some cases called fog computing, allows data processing to be as close to the source as possible. Because the communication distance it spans is not as far, it can be processed faster, making self-driving cars safer to operate. In short, if you are in a self-driving car and suddenly face an unexpected accident, you will not wait for the car to send the data to the cloud for processing. You may want to let it stop first. Although cloud technology has many benefits, its reliability is not enough to cope with all the information on the Internet of Things. In particular, multi-cloud environments face security issues, latency issues, and even supplier issues. With the high-speed, low-latency data transmission of 5G, the potential of edge computing will be fully realized in various applications from the above-mentioned smart cities and smart factories to real-time provision and analysis.

In the technology industry, people tend to predict a lot of "next big things". In my opinion, 5G is indeed the thing that makes the "next big thing" possible. For example, 4G is like a country road, and 5G is more like a highway. 5G is taking the digital age to a new level, and the development that follows is exciting.

Original title: Five Advancements 5G Will Enable In The Future

[Translated by 51CTO. Please indicate the original translator and source as 51CTO.com when reprinting on partner sites]