How 5G can change the world for the better | IoT Insider Podcast Episode 15

Dan Cunliffe
Welcome everybody to the IoT insider podcast. My name is Dan Cunliffe, Managing Director of Pangea. Thank you so much for joining us. Today we are very pleased to be joined by one of our team, but also the good doctor in Dr. Arslan Usman, who is our residential 5G expert and has been with us for almost two years now, Arslan. And today, we’re going to take a look at how 5G is being used as a force for good in the world. You’ll remember from our last podcast, we spoke a lot about the Nottingham Forest project and how 5G is being used over there. And we’ve had some really good feedback on that. So we thought we’ll continue and see how things like 5G and I guess, you know, connectivity can also be a positive thing in the world. So without further ado, welcome, Arslan thanks for joining us.

Dr. Arslan Usman
Hi, Dan. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me.

Dan Cunliffe
You’re very, very, very welcome. Let’s dive straight into it, and talk about 5G as a positive change. So probably one of the more obvious ones that’s been sort of brought out recently was that the base stations, the 5G base stations versus a 4G base station is actually able to consume less energy and the kind of stats we’ve been looking at is a Huawei 5G base station using up to 20% less energy than their 4G ones. That already is a big change, right? I mean, because there’s mobile networks all over the world. What’s your take on that? What’s maybe the reasons that the guys can learn about?

Dr. Arslan Usman
So let’s start with the fact that there is no wonder that 5G is a splendid technology and has definitely has great superiority over its predecessor, 4G. But the world we live in now is significantly different than when 4G was unveiled nearly 10 to 12 years ago like this. Now, we think there are several different aspects that are interconnected. So it’s not only just about rolling out the next generation of wireless networks, you have to think on a global scale, and there is a great emphasis on sustainability and environmental pollution. So definitely, we cannot neglect the fact that certain wireless connectivity solutions will definitely result in increase of electricity consumption, and consequently leading to more carbon dioxide emissions. But there is good news, definitely there is great news that where a single kilowatt of electricity is sufficient to download around 300 High Definition videos using a 4G network. 5G on the other hand can definitely because of its improved radio access technology, it can power up to 5000 Ultra High Definition, not High Definition, it’s UHD (Ultra High Definition) we download, and it consumed the same amount of energy saving on electricity. So it’s a very amazing stat there. So these figures, they might seem too ideal. But tech giants like Huawei, as you have mentioned already that 5G networks and base stations, specifically, they consume less energy. And to be specific, it’s up to 20%, less energy compared to 4G base stations. So tech giants like Huawei, they’re already running tests and their results out there. So these are not just theoretical figures. And no one no matter how small these numbers seem, when it comes to the fact that by 2020, we will have 10 billion more connected devices, including end user devices and nodes in smart factories. So collectively looking at the number of connected devices in a couple of years, you can see that this will save a lot of energy per device, hence leading to less carbon dioxide emissions and paving the way towards sustainable environment.

Dan Cunliffe
Hundred percent. And I think what’s nice is that there’s actually been some tangible answers on that. It’s not like saying, Oh, yeah, it’s theoretical, it will do it. You know, we don’t want to talk about some of the things to challenge 5G, but power consumption is a challenge to 5G, in terms of how you use it on the device side, but actually, it’s a good news story, that the base stations will actually be a far more efficient perspective. And I like your analogy around, you know, when you’re downloading something, you’re actually probably using more energy because you’re taking longer to do it, and you’re less efficient versus where we are. So no, no, really, really good stuff. I mean, the other the other things that we’ve been kind of looking through in terms of climate change improvements there, is the computational power that 5G enables, or the ability to make quicker decisions and to, you know, reduce the latency across the networks with the ability of 5G helps things like you know, improve traffic management, or possibly even traffic jams being redirected quicker because the algorithms can be, you know, way, way, way more intense than what they are today. I quite like that. I think, you know, air pollution from idling vehicles and traffic jams have actually resulted in over 3 million deaths a year according to the World Health Organisation and just being able to make; you could argue, simple changes that adjust the way the algorithms are working and being able to have that computational power is pretty important as well.

Dr. Arslan Usman
So coming to traffic management, I think here we need to emphasise the best thing that 5G will enable is rollout of vehicular networks. And the stats that you just mentioned by World Health Organisation, they’re always trying to alarm us with stats like 3 million deaths just because of idle traffic, or, more specifically, you can say it’s because of traffic jams. So I believe the drivers refusing to improvise and redirect their vehicles to alternate routes, it plays a big role in creating traffic jams. So one mistake can lead to a traffic jam of like an hour or so. We have examples from big economies like India, Turkey, Philipines, Indonesia, when V2V communication, that is vehicle to vehicle communication, will be enabled using 5G networks, this can be overcome to a greater extent because we will have roadside units which will be tiny base stations that will be communicating with the cars continuously. Cameras, sensors, lots of AI, combined with Google Maps, this will help the drivers driving the vehicles to redirect their cars alternate routes, those routes might be longer, but at the same time, they will help us avoid traffic jams and hence leading towards lesser air pollution and better environment. So vehicular networks, they have certain requirements of course, so you need ultra reliability and low latency. Definitely, these two are very important. So we have always put great emphasise on the unique use cases of 5G like ultra reliable low latency communication and massive machine type communication. So these two combined together these use cases combined together will enable vehicular networks. And I think this is the way to go, and 5G has the potential to overcome this. Here, I would like to like create a scenario to just understand how it will make a positive impact. So imagine entering parking plaza, which has 8 floors and as soon as you enter the plaza, there is a machine there, let’s say it’s a roadside unit, just like I mentioned, it’s a base station, and it will communicate with your vehicle without you knowing it. Then say take this car to the seventh floor and park here, that’s the available parking space. So it saves you like 5 to 10 minutes easily in my experience. And if it is saving 5 to 10 minutes, if you take it to the global scale, there are billions of cars out there. So then definitely, it will lead to lesser electricity consumption, and also fuel consumption. So again, and on the long run, we can see that it’s proving to be sustainable.

Dan Cunliffe
I think it’s really about and I’ve kind of felt this about IoT for a long time is that, you know, the ability to to make small changes, but these small changes are kind of delivered globally, that makes the difference. You know, these little things where you’re like you talk about the parking situation, or you talk about the way that we have a V2V a vehicle to vehicle network, which you could argue that governments may actually mandate that vehicles of the future have air quality and environmental sensors on them as part of the rollout, right as part of building them in the future. So that we can take that information and use it for good, and really learn about what’s going on and start to, not that I want to sort of point to the kind of COVID situation, but one of the positives, of which there not too many out of COVID but one of the positives is the fact that our cities are actually far cleaner in terms of the fact that we’ve not been travelling, you know, we’ve all been working from home and living from home. So, environmental impact has been pretty useful. And I will just apologise if you heard a child running in the background because it was it we are recording this in safe spaces. And well, well over two metres apart. So yeah, you know, and and kind of I see I can see that happening. I really can. 5G is a massive play towards that because of more devices are able to be connected per square kilometre, because of, you know, the technology.

Dr. Arslan Usman
Let’s like. So you have up to a million devices per square kilometre when it comes to massive machine type communication in 5G. So definitely in vehicular networks for a single base station. If you’re connected to a single base station per person, let’s say your car has, I don’t know how many connected devices there will be. There will be sensors, communicating with the roadside units, you have your own devices. So let’s say per household, you can expect per normal household, where there are three to four family members, you can expect that you will have around 20 to 25 devices. So definitely we will need technology that can cater these kind of needs from end user perspective.

Dan Cunliffe
Yeah, hundred percent. Okay, let’s maybe talk a little bit about some of the other areas we want to concentrate on. So we want to talk a little bit about conservation. I want to talk a little about sort of accessibility outside of your norm. And then we maybe cover healthcare pretty quick. But in terms of the conservation side, the last podcast, we spoke a bit about forrest conservation. But we maybe wanted to talk a little bit about how can we help the endangered animals, and sort of what 5G solutions could do for that. Is there anything that you thought about in that perspective that we can maybe share with the guys?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Yes, I was just reading news recently regarding the world’s only white giraffe. It’s fascinating. At the same time, it’s very sad that it’s the only white giraffe left and has been fitted with a tracking device to keep the poachers away in north east Kenya. So it’s very alarming for us when we hear such kind of news. So this can be done in a more efficient manner if there’s a technology of course. Talking about 5G that supports more number of connected devices per square kilometre. So here I will give an example of Huawei’s very recent project that they have been doing in Canada. So what they do is in so you know that Canada is full of forests. It’s a massive, massive country. It’s full of forests, and they always have problems regarding endangered species declining continuously, and also illegal deforestation is a big issue there. So Huawei has planned some project where they put audio sensors all over the forest. So you definitely need a lot of audio sensors here. And they have used artificial intelligence to sort of underscore or highlight alien noises that usually don’t belong to a forest. And then they alarm the park rangers that okay, there is something going on. Like, it sounds very unfamiliar, it shouldn’t happen. And they stay proactive. And this way, they can stop the illegal deforestation and poaching. So this is a wonderful project, I think if it becomes a reality, so just for our viewers, if, for our listeners, they if they want to google it out, it’s called guardians in rain forests programme, so you can see that how it’s creating a positive impact. And they have chosen Canada, because Canada is one of the countries where since 1970 till today, endangered species have been continuously in decline. And poaching is a very big reason there.

Dan Cunliffe
Well, it’s the it’s the only, it’s the only way in my view to try and not just, you know, start to tackle poaching, because poaching will happen because there’s always poverty in the world, right. And people are trying to, they’re doing it because, you know, they’re obviously driven by the poverty that they live in, to kind of make these things happen. And the education part around you know, that these a lot of this being from South Africa, we get a lot of Rhino poaching, and a lot of elephant poaching, for their horns and for their tusks, and it’s not worth that much, you know, it’s not worth these things that people think it is. But the only way to curb it long term is to is to use the technology to try and prevent the action happening. But also, obviously, educating the people that these things are not kind of in, you know, not as valuable as they perceive it to be. I actually want to talk a little bit about the project that that you particularly are working on regarding healthcare, and particularly how the solutions we’re trying to drive within ambulance, 5G Solutions could could actually really save lives. Do you maybe just want to give us a bit about that, how it’s going and kind of where we’re on our way to?

Dr. Arslan Usman
So we have spoken a number of times about the project. So I hope that our listeners already have an idea of what we’re talking about here. So in summary, we’re trying to connect the UK’s ambulances, through 5G networks so that we can enhance the quality of pre hospital healthcare. So there’s, there’s certain data that is produced within the ambulances that is not communicated with the hospitals or doctors and if on time it is communicated, then definitely it can lead to 2 very big advantages. One, saving lives of course. Two, sometimes patients don’t really need to be hospitalised. That’s all. So these two advantages will be the ones that will really reshape how we see healthcare in UK varies. So right now we are already done with the research part of it. And now we are moving towards the development phase. And we have a number of end users like NHS Croydon Trust is taking keen interest in our project and they’re helping us to have connections with London ambulance services, Kent and Sussex ambulance services. They’re our end users and we are trying to get everything done on the right time so that we can do tests and bring this product commercially available.

Dan Cunliffe
Absolutely. And you know, it’s a decent shout out because it is a way that we are using the technologies in a real world environment. You know, we spoke a lot about examples that are out there and other countries, but actually doing it in Pangea itself is actually pretty cool. I just add one more to that something that’s been very recent, actually, is that we’re working with one of our partners to deliver the rollout of the vaccine stations. So hopefully, the COVID vaccine is something that is going to be positive and kind of makes those changes really, really viable. But again, you know, in healthcare, being able to connect anywhere you are, being able to connect quickly, and so that you can effectively pop up something like a vaccine centre in anywhere you are is very important, because that means people don’t have to all go to hospitals and risk spreading the disease before the vaccine gets applied. It’s pretty interesting. No, perfect. I mean, I think I think that that probably brings us to the end of this one. Really, really good, you know, kind of examples from improvements in kind of using less energy with the base stations, vehicle to vehicle networks, and how that drives improvements in air pollution. We talked about conservation, and of course, healthcare and our project, just before we say goodbye Arslan, anything else that you would just kind of talk about a little bit around around sort of 5G and its versions of good.

Dr. Arslan Usman
I believe that 5G has all positive aspects tied to it. So it’s, it’s a good thing that in this podcast, we have mainly spoken about the positive outcomes of 5G, because we all need some positivity in our lives right now. Yeah, that was the aim of this podcast.

Dan Cunliffe
A very good point, and very, very well made. So yeah, thanks very much to everybody who’s been tuning in and listening, we do appreciate it. Please do subscribe, and head over to our website, and subscribe to our newsletters where you know, stories like this one, and many others are kind of posted out on a monthly basis, we do see our kind of role in this is to provide relevant and important content right across IoT and the world of connectivity. If you do have any plans to make a difference with 5G in your own product, please do give us a call or drop us a note through the website. We’ll be very interested to talk and kind of listen to you. Signing off on that. Dr. Aslan, thank you so much for joining us again. We really appreciate it.

Dr. Arslan Usman
Thank you very much for having me.

Dan Cunliffe
No worries. And yeah, for those of you who are listening to us for the first time, thank you and do definitely join us again. That’s me, Dan Cunliffe Managing Director of Pangea. Thank you so much.