IoT Insider Podcast | Episode 4: Introducing Dr Arslan Usman

Dan Cunliffe
Welcome, everybody. My name is Dan Cunliffe, Managing Director of Pangea. And thank you very much for listening to our podcast. Today we have a very exciting guest with us. Already part of the Pangea family pretty much is Dr. Arslan Usman who is quoted as our System Architect for our 5G project. I don’t like that title. I told him earlier, I think we need a better title than that. I’m gonna go for head honcho of everything 5G. But Arslan maybe you tell us a little bit about your background, and obviously, some of the very exotic and interesting places you’ve been to get to where you are today.

Dr. Arslan Usman
Hi, Dan thanks for having me. Well, my journey for regarding research started when I went to Sweden from Pakistan after completing my bachelor’s in telecommunication engineering. And I started working with one of the most famous researchers in quality of multimedia experience, Dr. Benny Lövström in Sweden, and we worked on different videos. And at that time, it was just short definition and high definition videos. Yeah, because it was back in 2012. And we worked on how network can be optimised using quality of experience tools, how quality of videos can be measured, and certainly, at the back end, how the videos can be optimised.

Dan Cunliffe
And a lot of our listeners will be will be quite telecoms focused, guys. So I’ve heard of Quality of Service, but I can guess the quality of experiences. How would you? How would you kind of define the differences?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Well, Dan as you have just mentioned about 5G. So let’s talk about quality of experience, because 5G is going to be mainly user centric. So when we talk about Quality of Service, we are only talking about the network nodes and certain kind of transmission errors that impact the quality. So Quality of Service can be can have some certain aspect of user, but quality of experience is mainly about how the user experiences while transmission takes place, whether it’s purely multimedia or just some normal data service. Still, how the user is experiencing it. So that defines the quality of experience and 5G networks are going to be about quality of experience.

Dan Cunliffe
Okay, very interesting. So from Sweden, where did you find yourself going next? What was what was next in the plan?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Well, then from Sweden, I continue to go to Nigeria. And I keep facing these questions that why such a sudden jump from Sweden? Yes. And then Nigeria, I was working with Nokia. Back then it was Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. And we were working on a project that we had to bring the network operators in West Central Africa, from 3G to 4G. And the jump was mainly about, as 3G has had very limited data services, but 4G will have massive capacity for data services. But the customer base in West Central Africa was not more inclined towards data services. So the campaign was to create awareness among the customer base at the same time, prepare the network operators that the rest of the world is already using 4G networks, they need to move towards 4G LTE.

Dan Cunliffe
So would that mean that most of the Nigerian operators are running on Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise/Nokia equipment?

Dr. Arslan Usman
I would say that not fully because you know that in fully in terms of network, we have the backhaul and we have the front end services. So Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise was famous for their backhaul, microwave backhaul, yeah. Because they were one of the best providers for wireless backhaul, okay. And at the same time, they were famous for Managed Services. So after the network is deployed, they were providing their management after management. And also they were famous for rollout of the network. So partially they have their owning most of the network in Nigeria.

Dan Cunliffe
And Nigeria is a is a fascinating place. Not been there myself, but you know, I’ve heard great stories. Any anything interesting going on in Nigeria, particularly around the food, anything that you?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Well, I tried one of their famous foods called Fufu. I was never able to cook it, because it’s really hard to make it. I’ve heard that it’s made of semolina. Okay, so it’s you have it’s sort of a dough. You have to eat it with something. So I kind of mixed my own food taste with it.

Dan Cunliffe
Nice, Fufu for anyone going to Nigeria this week. Fufu on the menu is what do you need to do. And then I believe you, you jumped to the other side of the world and checked out a bit of South Korea?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Yes, after spending a year in industry, I decided to go back to research. I had a very handsome scholarship in South Korea. So I pursued there. And as soon as I joined, we won one of the most famous grants provided by National Research Fund and it was about 5G, and we were supposed to spend two years in creating a simulator and later on then implementing it on hardware as well. So we worked on Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA), which is one of the most famous candidates for 5G.

Dan Cunliffe
Right? And how many people were actually in that group working on that?

Dr. Arslan Usman
We were seven PhD students, as well as three master’s students. So it was a team of nine students. At the same time, we were supervised by our PhD supervisor who is famous for working in wireless communication networks. And we worked on Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) combined with full duplex, because when we talk about 5G, we are concerned about massive connectivity, high capacity manifold capacity, I would say, and low latency. So Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) can provide high capacity and full duplex can provide low latency. So this combination is a very good candidate for 5G.

Dan Cunliffe
I’d like you to answer maybe two questions in the simulator, what was the capacity achieved? And what is the latency achieved? But then I want you to put that against what you think today in London or in Kingston, we would get to a mobile phone or to a device when 5G is available for both capacity and latency.

Dr. Arslan Usman
Well, if we talk about the Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA), then we call it manifold capacity because it utilises something called the power domain. And what happens is that single channel can be used by multiple users. So if we talk about 10 users, so it means 10 times capacity, right? Yes. So whatever capacity you’re achieving, or throughput or bandwidth you’re achieving right now, you run speed tests on your phones, just multiply it with 10. That is what you’re going to have and Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) will be there.

Dan Cunliffe
So I guess on my phone, if I’m, if I’m close enough to Well, probably the best I’ve ever seen at the moment, because the the iPhones are running some high level of modems, but I’ve seen close to between 180 megabits per second, because it’s a category 12 on there. Do you think I could get 10 times that?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Certainly yes. Because it’s very remarkable that it uses the power domain. Yeah. So basically, you are not using any frequency division. Interesting. Yes. So it can certainly reach manifold capacity. 10 was just a factor. We have even tried it with 20 users on a single channel. So it can even go 20 but the challenge here is the receiver design. Yeah. Because this kind of scenario will create some energy inefficiency at the receiver and suck loads of power. Yes, so that can be an issue but certainly it’s in the research community. It’s a hot topic, so they’re working on it.

Dan Cunliffe
Well, let’s move ourselves to good old Kingston which is obviously where the office is but you joining Kingston University, which has effectively started our 5G project. Tell us a bit about joining Kingston and kind of how how we’ve come to come to meet you come to join us.

Dr. Arslan Usman
So after finishing my PhD, one thing I have missed that I was not only working on next generation wireless networks, I was also working on multimedia networks, how videos are transmitted, and how network can be optimised for video transmission. So I had a contact here in Kingston University, one of the famous professors in multimedia networks. So I was able to start working as a postdoctoral research fellow with her. And I worked for a year with her. And our main focus was about video transmission of ultrasound videos. So here I have been working on medical videos and how network can be optimised for successful medical video transmission.

Dan Cunliffe
Okay, cool. And then that kind of nicely leads us into what we are attempting to achieve. With our 5G project, which for the listeners who’ve not heard anything about or seen any of the PR we, between Pangea, Kingston University and with the funding from Innovate UK, we’re attempting to improve compression techniques over wireless networks in particularly focusing on 5G as our wireless network, but also focusing on the health sector and particularly video transmission. It’s kind of the focus areas over there. Tell me a little bit about what you think, is the way we’re going to tackle it? How is it gonna be possible to to create a world class compression technique for wireless networks?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Well, I think that as everyone is talking about artificial intelligence and how to make everything intelligent, video compression tools are there. Yeah. But we need something which can do smart coding and intelligent compression. So whatever you have on hand, whatever is being transmitted through the wireless network, let’s say it’s a 5G network, which has massive capacity and low latency. So we have a tele surgery going on. And it needs to optimise itself according to the requirements. So we call it smart and intelligent video compression.

Dan Cunliffe
Got it, just out of interest, you may not have the answer yet. But how how will it understand the type of data coming through? Or the requirement? How do you think it’s going to do that?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Well, that’s why I said that it’s going to be based on artificial intelligence. So we have some designed algorithm at the transmission end or the receiver end that is going to assess the data based on some machine learning algorithm that is going to tell that okay, this is this is medical data, we think this is the type of data.

Dan Cunliffe
Maybe the source IP could be in there or something like that?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So there are many ways that we can identify the data.

Dan Cunliffe
So just continuing on video. And from the health care sector perspective, we are looking to do a partner event or something related to a 5G testbed, which is which is going to be showing us a little bit about a virtual reality environment at St. George’s hospital, which is in Tooting, London. Tell me a little bit about what we’re looking to do there. What’s the kind of interesting side on that?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Well, with Kingston University, we already are working on a 5G testbed, yes, it’s a consortium between different universities, and Huawei as well is helping us to do that. And at St. George’s hospital, they have a very high tech, immersive environment, which can be transformed into medical emergency some some sort of fire emergency, and we have ambulance testbeds as well. So we are going to create a 5G like scenario in that immersive environment that can show that how 5Gs low latency and massive capacity can achieve concepts like tele surgery.

Dan Cunliffe
Yeah. And so for the listeners, especially our partners, we would like to put something together and let the guys go see that. It’s an exciting topic. And I think, you know, people want to fully understand how and when and when it will be available. But at the moment, there’s a lot of speculation around which is the best way to kind of deliver it and move it forward. Okay, perfect. Um, I think we’re gonna move over to a couple of really interesting questions, hopefully, a little bit about Arslan’s background, and I guarantee this will not be the last time you hear from him. Because we will be doing more and more on this topic. So probably the first thing that I wanted to ask is just for kind of, you know, from a consumer or kind of end user perspective, what do you think is probably going to be the most interesting benefit? With 5G coming down? You know, what are we as kind of consumers, but maybe for our partners, what are they going to be able to sell more of or get more into?

Dr. Arslan Usman
I think 5G is going to bring massive connectivity. So we have concepts like Internet of Things, but now we are talking about Internet of Everything. So every single node that is commercially available in industries or at home, they can be connected, they can talk to each other without any kind of human intervention. So Internet of Everything, bringing massive connectivity. I think that is going to be a breakthrough that will classify help us classify between 4G and 5G networks. Because manifold capacity and ultra low latency, these two things are required for massive connectivity. And it just drives the right kind of outcomes. Right? Yes. And then with a rough estimate done by Cisco, we are going to have 14 billion devices by the end of 2019. So this means that these 14 billion devices are not only cell phones, yeah, they can be any node at all commercially or industrially available. So they have to be connected with each other.

Dan Cunliffe
Yeah, big, big jump for the IoT market, of course. Huge, huge increases there. Now exciting times. Um, let’s tone it down a bit. And a couple of questions from my side. Tell us a little bit about any sort of hidden talents, you might have something that people wouldn’t really realise about Arslan?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Well, I’m a part time magician.

Dan Cunliffe
Arslan has literally pulled rabbits out of hats in front of me if you could see it, you would believe it.

Dr. Arslan Usman
Well, other than that, I do photography as well. And I have good fan following on Instagram.

Dan Cunliffe
You want to do a little shout out? What’s your Instagram?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Yes, if someone is a lover of nature and wildlife photography, it’s Pristine Moments by Arslan on Instagram do follow.

Dan Cunliffe
Pristine Moments by Arslan, love it. What is what is your most recent photo? If you can remember?

Dr. Arslan Usman
I took a picture of deer in the Richmond Park and it’s really I think it’s very unique.

Dan Cunliffe
Perfect. Yes, go and have a look. Pristine Moments by Arslan on Instagram. So when you hear this, when the listeners hear this, it will be the past. But today when we were recording, is the Comms Dealer Sales and Marketing Awards. We’re up for three awards. And it is very possible that Chris Romeika might drag us along to a session of karaoke afterwards. What would be your go to karaoke song?

Dr. Arslan Usman
Well, here I think I will go with one of Michael Jackson’s very famous song. Heal the World.

Dan Cunliffe
Heal the World. Nice, brings people together.

Dr. Arslan Usman
Yes, it’s about connectivity. So let’s connect everything.

Dan Cunliffe
Exactly. On point, love it. And at the moment, you know, pretty much every advert, every brand is using Game of Thrones to try and get a few extra eyeballs on their product. So we wouldn’t be able to finish our podcast without a Game of Thrones question. If you were in Game of Thrones, which house would you belong to? But don’t spoil anything? Because I’ve only watched the first two episodes. I’ve not seen the next one yet.

Dr. Arslan Usman
Well, I think I would be supporting and I do support House Stark because it sort of gives me a reflection of my own life. Perfect. It’s about sacrifice and effort and determination. Yeah.

Dan Cunliffe
No pay no gain in the House of Stark. Oh, yes. Excellent. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Really appreciate it. For the listeners out there. As I said, there’ll be so much more to talk about as 5G develops. It’s pretty much in the in the world, the news every day at the moment. And it is a exciting time in the comms industry, particularly around 5G and we’ll be talking more about it. Thanks again, and we will be issuing the next podcast next month. I’m Dan Cunliffe, Managing Director of Pangea. Thank you very much.