- 3 hours ago
by Gokul Srinivasan, Robots Expert Finland Oy at Low Latency Conference during the Photonics Applications Week
This presentation will explore the various application of 5G technology in the UAV industry. Also, this presentation will cover the work done by the 5G!Drones Project, an EU H2020 project exploring various use cases with 5G technology and drones.
This presentation will explore the various application of 5G technology in the UAV industry. Also, this presentation will cover the work done by the 5G!Drones Project, an EU H2020 project exploring various use cases with 5G technology and drones.
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Thank you, Peter, for having me here.
00:11It's really a privilege to be here presenting amongst experts from different industries.
00:17And thank you, Rudy, for such an excellent presentation.
00:22And also, it was a perfect segue for my presentation.
00:26So I love the way this is being organized.
00:27And without much delay or latency, I want to move into my presentation.
00:35Just bad joke, sorry.
00:38Today, I would like to talk about 5G technology and how it's being used in the UAV, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or Drone Industry.
00:49Short introduction, my name is Koko Krishna, and I work with Robots Expert.
00:53We are a Finnish company, but we have our business across the globe.
01:01Recently, from last month, we declared our partnership and we made it public that we are working with Frequentist to establish UTM, which is Unmanned Traffic Management Services in Finland and Estonia.
01:18Having said that, Robots Expert has a track record of participating in EU projects.
01:26Currently, we are being one of the partners of the 5G drones EU Horizon 2020 project with quite a lot of partners from across Europe,
01:38ranging from SMEs to telecom providers to research institutions.
01:42And previously, Robots Expert was also involved in the Gulf of Finland project, which was a USPACE project funded by the European Commission.
01:54And the picture that you see is actually an autonomous drone, a larger autonomous drone, flying from Estonia to Finland.
02:05And this was the first ever flight to be performed of that type from takeoff to landing, fully autonomous, flying across the Baltic Sea.
02:12And you can see that it's flying at 1,300 meters above mean sea level, and it's flying at about 150 kilometers per hour.
02:22And this was one of the accomplishments that we made in the Gulf of Finland project.
02:28And the other major accomplishment was that we brought Volokopter, the air taxi company from Germany.
02:35We brought them to Finland, and it was the first time ever an air taxi performed a flight in a major international airport,
02:45when the airport was open for other traffic, meaning there were other aircraft taking off and landing while the air taxi was flying.
02:54So we were really privileged to be a part of it and perform safety assessments and architecture and equation and all of that.
03:01Now, during the course of this presentation, I would like to talk about the 5G drones project,
03:07what we are doing as a part of the project, how we use and combine 5G technology with drones and some of the insights that we have gained from the project.
03:18And finally, we will go into a little bit of details about 5G and where we are and where we go from there.
03:24So 5G and use cases.
03:27So the first use case that we targeted was UAV traffic management.
03:33So there's a lot of things happening here in this picture.
03:35And I want to start with the right extreme, where you have the drone operator that's connected to a 5G network.
03:44And the drone operator is able to see, let's say, a live 3D map or a LiDAR data that's being transformed into a 3D model, something like that,
03:56where the drone operator is making use of the drone.
03:59And on the top left, you can see the drones themselves are connected to 5G NR, which is 5G new radio, which is the tower.
04:07And right next to that is a box that says MEC, which is the multi-axis edge computing, which is where all the magic happens.
04:19Instead of the data having to be sent all the way from the drone to the user, a lot of computation can happen at the drone itself or on board the aircraft.
04:34And the aircraft is connected to 5G, and from there, the processed data or the metadata or the results are being shared across the 5G core cloud.
04:46Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.
04:48Excuse my throat.
04:49Now, the advantage is that we can have multiple of these aircrafts connected.
04:54Excuse me.
04:56It's not COVID.
04:58Don't worry.
04:59They can have multiple of these aircrafts connected to the traffic or the same 5G network.
05:05And in the center, the blue circle shows the UTM control,
05:11which is basically the air traffic controller or it could be the UTM partner
05:16who can actually monitor all the aircrafts, what speed you're flying at,
05:21what altitude you're flying at.
05:22Are you breaching into any controlled airspace?
05:25Are you in danger of collision with another aircraft?
05:29All of those things can be monitored.
05:31So we are doing this entire setup over a 5G network.
05:36So that's one of the use cases.
05:39The next is public safety.
05:41And in this case, I'm going to talk about forest fires
05:43because that's what's happening in California.
05:47So it's more relevant to talk about that.
05:49So as you can see, there's a backhaul drone.
05:53Instead of having a fixed 5G network,
05:56they're going to put a 5G antenna or a base station
05:59on a drone and let the drone fly.
06:03That way, it's able to actually provide kind of like this mobile network
06:09where the drone can go to any part and provide 5G connectivity.
06:15Now, the camera drone and the other drones that you see on the right side
06:19would subscribe to that 5G network,
06:21the GnodeB network from the backhaul drone
06:27and start transmitting, for example, thermal image.
06:32They can start monitoring how far and how wide the forest fires are spreading.
06:37And this information can be used by the UAS,
06:42which is Unmanned Aerial System, over-the-edge computing
06:47so that the fire marshals can actually plan their operations
06:52in a better, efficient way.
06:54It's also a lot safer for them to do this.
06:56So in this case, we see plenty of different colored lines
07:03connecting different entities.
07:05So some of them are telemetry slides.
07:08Slides here is basically a dedicated section of the network
07:13that nobody else can interfere with.
07:15So that slides and the big guarantees here the bandwidth
07:19and the ultra-low latency that 5G promises.
07:23Telemetry refers to the vital information from the drone,
07:28such as the battery power, what altitude you're flying at,
07:32what is your GPS coordinates, and all of those things,
07:35which is absolutely essential for the UTM,
07:38which is traffic management.
07:41So you can see how much hop-overs the data has to do,
07:46but with the advantage of 5G and edge computing and such things,
07:50these become ultra-fast.
07:52So that's the second use case.
07:56The third use case is something we are going to test in a couple of weeks
08:03from now, is we are able to provide portable wireless network.
08:11In this case, this is happening at a stadium.
08:14We have the backhaul drone, which is providing 5G connectivity to the crowd in the stadium.
08:23So the stadium that we see here is the municipality of Egalio in Greece.
08:28Egalio is a town very close to Athens, Greece.
08:31And we are going to have a drone hover above the stadium, providing 5G connectivity to the audience seated.
08:40And there will also be a patrolling drone, which is also connected to the 5G network.
08:46And that drone is providing real-time situational awareness.
08:50For example, it could be a security drone.
08:53It could be a drone doing other essential functionalities.
08:59Maybe it could be a drone that's doing different videography of the stadium.
09:03So there can be a lot of different applications.
09:06So even here, we can see that we are taking advantage of the edge computing and the 5G core cloud
09:16and the capability to actually slice different components of the network.
09:22That way, each entity is guaranteed to have a certain level of latency.
09:27These are just some of the examples from our 5G drones project that we are targeting.
09:33And this is a three-year project, and they are in the second year now.
09:37I mean, they are in the month 14.
09:39So we plan on accomplishing at least six other use cases like this one.
09:46And for more information, please do follow the 5G drones website.
09:52We have a dedicated website where we publish all the materials and we disseminate relevant results from the project.
10:02Now, the target we are looking for from all of these different trials as a part of this 5G drones project is the C tooling,
10:12which stands for command and control.
10:14If I have a drone, which has a transmitter, and the transmitter is connected to 5G, drone is connected to 5G,
10:22and if I say, hey, drone, land, and we want the drone to be able to receive that command and respond to it,
10:30and we are looking for less than 10 milliseconds one day between the eNodeB and the drone.
10:39And for the telemetry, which we discussed, like GPS coordinates, battery percentage,
10:47hector of altitude, attitude, and those vital information, we are targeting less than 100 milliseconds.
10:55And for application data, such as transmitting video or LiDAR data and things like that,
11:01we want to be able to achieve less than or approximately 200 milliseconds.
11:06And finally, the end user data.
11:09So if you have a UTM operator or the authority who is sitting at the tower of the airport,
11:19we are targeting 50 milliseconds to be able to see what's really happening in the airspace.
11:25Having said all of that, I want to move into a little more details about the 5G itself.
11:31First, we want to talk about the types of 5G.
11:37Because when we say 5G, the general assumption is that, oh, there's 5G similar to 4G.
11:42But there's many different types of 5G.
11:46Generally, the minute you picture 5G, it's being marketed as it has the best coverage,
11:52best bandwidth, best latency, but that's not always the case.
11:56If you take a low bandwidth, which is less than 1 gigahertz, like 900 megahertz maybe,
12:03with that kind of a frequency, you could get very good coverage.
12:09But the bandwidth is really low, and you're looking at 10 millisecond latency.
12:15So that, in a way, helps.
12:17For example, in the drone industry, you could perform BV loss operation,
12:21which is beyond visual line of sight.
12:23So we could fly a drone from, let's say, Brussels to Antwerp,
12:30and all we need is a low-band spectrum for that.
12:33But is that going to help us see what's happening from a drone's perspective
12:40with a video camera in real time?
12:43Maybe not.
12:44So for that, we need to move up a little bit.
12:48So we have to go past the mid-bands, which are typically 1 gigahertz to 7 gigahertz,
12:54which kind of provides optimum coverage and optimum bandwidth and latency.
13:02But even that doesn't compete that well with the existing 4G.
13:07So we have to move to the high band, which is 24 gigahertz to 48 gigahertz,
13:12or what's called a millimeter wave technology.
13:17This is where you see all the things that are being marketed,
13:21where you have more than 100 megahertz in bandwidth.
13:24So you can have a ton of IoT devices,
13:27and I think you can have about a million mobile phone devices connected
13:32within one square kilometer area.
13:34And it guarantees a latency of less than one millisecond or one millisecond,
13:41which is fantastic.
13:43So based on this, some of the conclusions that we have to make.
13:48Not all 5G is created equal.
13:51When somebody is selling you 5G technology,
13:53you have to ask the question, what spectrum are you offering?
13:56What frequency are you offering?
13:57Will I be able to access this sitting inside my –
14:01so in Finland, Sauna is really popular.
14:03So can I use this 5G inside my sauna?
14:07Because, for example, if you take the super high band,
14:10the millimeter wave, which gives you the one millisecond latency
14:13and bandwidth of about greater than 100 megahertz,
14:20those waves cannot penetrate through reinforced cement concrete
14:24or asphalt surface.
14:26So if you're sitting in a sauna in Finland,
14:28there's a very high chance you're going to lose 5G connectivity.
14:33So please make sure you ask the question,
14:36what 5G spectrum is being offered by your provider?
14:41Next.
14:42The network providers themselves have to choose between the two.
14:48Or they have to choose two between the three features,
14:52coverage, bandwidth, latency.
14:54You get two of those.
14:55You can't get all three with the same spectrum,
15:00which is very well shown here in the chart that we are seeing.
15:06So if you take a low band, it gives you good coverage,
15:09but you actually get very high latency.
15:13But if you go to the high band, you get really good latency
15:16or really less latency and bandwidth,
15:18but you don't have much coverage.
15:21So less than half a mile is the coverage.
15:24So this is the complicated part.
15:28Now, based on this, they can classify 5G into three different types.
15:33One is the massive machine-type communication,
15:37which is abbreviated as MMTC.
15:40This is the one that guarantees you that you can connect almost like a million devices
15:49in a square kilometer area.
15:52And it also provides a fairly low data rate, so 1 to 100 kbps.
15:57But then they can go to enhanced mobile broadband,
16:01which actually promises four millisecond latency for the user plane,
16:07which is a lot better than the MMTC,
16:10because MMTC could take anywhere from seconds to hours of latency.
16:14So it's completely different if we think about it.
16:18And from EMDD, we can move to ultra-reliable low latency,
16:22which is, I think, the core theme of this conference.
16:25This is where we actually get one millisecond latency,
16:31and also we are targeting half a millisecond user plane.
16:35So remember, in 5G, you have different planes.
16:37You have the control plane, and you have the user plane.
16:40So we have to be careful where they are promising what,
16:43otherwise it's going to look like snake oil.
16:45So in the user plane, the commitment is half a millisecond latency.
16:51And also it's targeting fairly low to medium data rates, roughly around 50 kilobytes per second to 10 mbps.
17:02And this is meant for high-mobility applications, such as self-driving cars, drones,
17:07and other applications which might involve smart mobility, smart cities applications.
17:16So having said all of this, what are the challenges involving 5G technology?
17:23First things first, business models.
17:25There is not that much concrete business models in terms of who pays who, how much,
17:32because 5G is an entire ecosystem.
17:34It's not a technology that's provided just by the telecom provider.
17:39So we are still in very, very early stages regarding this business model.
17:45So we still need to see what's more profitable, and we need to assess if there is an actual demand for 5G.
17:54There is definitely a lot of marketing happening, but the actual demand has not been realized yet.
18:01So as a part of the 5G drone technology, 5G drone project, apologies, 5G drone project,
18:07one of the work packages that we have is to assess the demand in the market
18:13and come up with innovative business models that could work out for everyone across the ecosystem.
18:21The next is the scalable deployment.
18:24So far, there has not been that many scalable deployments.
18:28We barely have a few base stations in urban conditions like the city center or some like in downtown Chicago.
18:39But if you go farther away, like a few blocks away from that, you know, that one building which has the base station,
18:46you may not be able to access 5G at all.
18:48So this calls for a scalable deployment plan that the operators could actually use.
18:56That leads us to the decision between millimeter wave, which is the, you know,
19:01ultra-reliable, low-latency, and high-bandwidth network,
19:06versus low-band spectrum, which is 5G can cover large distance and enable VV loss operations.
19:15So operators would have to choose between these different types of spectrums.
19:20So maybe they could go with a combination of spectrums,
19:24or maybe they could actually try and optimize it based on demand.
19:28So we are in very, very, very early stages in terms of actual technology deployment.
19:35I'm not talking about technology development.
19:38The development is great.
19:39I mean, it's fantastic.
19:40But the deployment has not been scaled up yet.
19:46Three minutes left for your presentation, Gokko.
19:51Three minutes is plenty.
19:54And then cybersecurity.
19:56So from 4G to 5G, when we actually moved, we managed to accomplish a lot of things.
20:04But one of the things we ended up doing was going virtual.
20:07In 5G, you have VNS, which is Virtual Network Functions.
20:11Going from a fully centralized network like 4G to a decentralized network like 5G,
20:18we have kind of opened up the gates for cybersecurity attacks and several other vulnerabilities.
20:25And then the Gartner Hype cycle.
20:28According to the Gartner Hype cycle, 5G was at the peak of inflated expectations in 2019, August.
20:37And yeah, it's going to be quite some time to get past the next few stages.
20:45And finally, public acceptance.
20:47There's already some or many conspiracy theories related to 5G technology.
20:52And I think we're going to have to work harder to earn the trust from the regulatory authorities and the public.
21:04Now, what next?
21:06First, this whole thing about 5G providing, you know, enhanced mobile broadband, MMPC, and ultra-reliable low latency by 2020 have to be forgotten.
21:19But it's only enhanced mobile broadband that's being tested currently.
21:26And in 2021 or 2021 through 2026 is when we expect ultra-low latency and MMPC or M2M will be deployed and tested at scale at mass.
21:44So we have a long way to go for 5G to mature and deliver the actual low latency promises that's been made.
21:55And then, you know, we have a couple of partners in the 5G drones project who are already playing around with 6G.
22:03So, and there is also this rumor that only even number of spectrums always succeed, like 2G, 4G, 6G.
22:10What happened to 3G by day?
22:12So, the prediction is that there's quite a decent possibility that 6G could become successful even before 5G picks up any level of revenue in the industry.
22:27So, with that being said, I want to thank all of you for listening to me and for this wonderful opportunity to present here.
22:37If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them and feel free to reach out to me or my colleagues anytime.
Comments