As 5G rollouts continue in predictable, patchy ways around the world, cellular technology is beginning to make inroads into Wi-Fi territory already dominated by another wireless technology. Private 5G networks, in which individuals or businesses build their own cellular network across their premises, are now being used in places where only Wi-Fi was once available. This month, Newbury, UK-based telecommunications company Vodafone released a Raspberry Pi-based private 5G base station that is now available to developers, which could spark a wave of private 5G innovation.
“The Raspberry Pi is the most affordable CPU[-based] “This is the most powerful computer we make,” says Santiago Tenorio, Vodafone’s director of network architecture, “so the computer we make is essentially the bill of materials equivalent to a high-quality Wi-Fi router.”
The company has partnered with Surrey, UK-based Lime Microsystems to release crowdfunded private 5G base station kits priced between $800 and $12,000.
“You can run it anywhere on a Raspberry Pi. In this case we used a Raspberry Pi 4, which is the smallest processor, so you can run it anywhere,” Tenorio said.
Santiago Tenorio holds one of Lime Microsystems’ private 5G base station kits.Vodafone
Private 5G for drones and bakeries
According to Tenorio, there are various reasons why individuals might want their own private 5G network: Right now, the scenarios are mostly about businesses and organizations, but 5G’s relatively low latency and network flexibility, for example, could appeal to professional individual users.
Tenorio highlighted security and mobility as two big selling points of private 5G.
For example, a commercial brick-and-mortar business may be attracted to the extra security protection that SIM cards offer compared to password-based wireless network security. Because each SIM card contains a unique identifier and encryption key, the network can recognize and approve each individual connection, making private 5G network security a big selling point, Tenorio says.
What’s more, Tenorio says it will be easy for customers to access: “There’s no password required. There’s no conversation required,” he said, assuming a bakery were to roll out its own 5G network. [with a clerk behind a counter] or a QR code. Just by entering the bakery, you are part of the bakery network.”
In terms of mobility, Tenorio suggests emergency rescue and rescue applications that rely on the presence of nearby 5G stations, sending signals to devices within range.
Tenorio said that installing private 5G base stations on drones would allow the drones to fly over disaster areas and report back by sending a challenge signal over the airborne network to all devices within their coverage area. Devices that receive the signal with a compatible SIM card would respond with their unique identifier.
“That way, they’ll try to register any phone calls,” Tenorio said, “and they’ll know if anyone’s there.” [there].”
Not only that, but because the signal comes from the device with the SIM card, a private 5G rescue drone in the above scenario could potentially provide critical information about each individual based on the device’s identifier alone. And private 5G’s user-identification capabilities aren’t entirely irrelevant to bakery owners and other commercial customers, Tenorio said.
“If you’re a bakery, you can actually find out who your customers are, because anyone who comes into your bakery registers with your network and leaves their information. [International Mobile Subscriber Identity].”
Win the delayed race
Private 5G networks could also reduce latency, according to Christian Wiedfeldt, a professor of electrical engineering at Germany’s Dortmund University of Technology, whose team has tested private 5G deployments (though Wiedfeldt said they haven’t yet tested current Vodafone/Lime Microsystem base stations) and found that private 5G reliably delivers better connectivity.
Wietfeld’s team will present their research at the IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Wireless Communications in Valencia, Spain, in September. The team found that compared to Wi-Fi (an IEEE 802.11 wireless standard), private 5G can provide connections up to 10 times faster than connections on heavily loaded networks.
“The additional cost and effort of operating a private 5G network will pay off in the form of less production downtime and fewer delays in delivering goods,” Wietfeld says, “and in safety-critical use cases, such as remote-operated driving on campuses, a private 5G network will provide the necessary reliability and performance predictability.”
Lime Networks CEO and founder Ebrahim Boucheri said the company’s challenge is to develop private 5G base stations that are as versatile and open as possible for any kind of application developers imagine, while still remaining relatively cheap and low-power.
“The solution needed to be ultra-portable and with an optional battery pack that could be mounted on a drone or autonomous robot for remote or tactical deployment, such as emergency response scenarios or temporary events,” Boucheri said.
Meanwhile, crowdfunding to support the device’s deployment through a website called Crowd Supply will allow the companies to understand what applications the developer community envisions for the technology, he said.
“Crowdfunding is one of the key indicators of community interest and engagement,” says Boucheri, “so we launched a campaign on Crowd Supply to get feedback from early adopters.”
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