Back from the Mobile World Congress 2018
For the fourth time in a row, I come back to Barcelone to attend the Mobile World Congress. Since 2006, this event organized by the GSMA gathers during four days exhibitors and a hundred of thousands of attendees interested in the field of « Mobile » communications.
Along with the vast exhibitions, speakers coming from global player companies in the domain discuss the future during keynotes and conferences. If only attendees registered with the precious Golden pass, all the conferences were live streamed in the eight exhibition halls.
Even the political tensions happening in the last six months between Spain and Catalonia, this year 107 000 visitors came from all over the world.
After five intense days walking along the corridors, attending fascinating GSMA seminars, or meeting potential partners, I take a few minutes to report the facts that get my attention this year.
GSMA Mobile IoT Summit and Samsung
Traditionally, the Sunday before the event, smartphone manufacturers unveiled their flashing smartphone.
This year, Samsung release its Galaxy S9 which embeds a dual aperture camera able to capture 720p video at 960 fps.
At the same moment, I was attending the GSMA Mobile IoT Summit, a much more confidential afternoon of seminars and demos, gathering people and companies interested in LPWANs and 5G IoT protocols.
Panels and presentations brought up the topic on a business side discussing monetization, market and use case. The demo session was much more interesting in my perspective: module makers present their latest platforms, like the Sequans Monarch or the U-Blox LTE Cat M1/NB-IoT modules.
A 5G Flavoured MWC
MWC 2018 was unquestionably the 5G edition with a question in everyone’s tongue: What will be the 5G’s killer app?
This question was primarily discussed during the keynotes or in the ZTE 5G Summit. As well, significant real use cases were demonstrated in the GSMA Innovation City: AI and virtual reality, drones, IoT powered services.
Another hot topic was the 5G business model and how to monetize these new services. In fact, most carriers agreed that the SIM business model is going to be out dated.
In the exhibition side also, 5G was everywhere: all the Intel booth was a 5G smart city demo with smart street lights, Vehicle-to-X (V2X) communication, a 5G core network, etc., and Qualcomm show its “cabin luggage” sized 5G smartphone. Also, Qualcomm announced a new Snapdragon SoC called Snapdragon 700 to offer a balance between their mid-range Snapdragon 600 and the high-end Snapdragon 800 series. Qualcomm says that Snapdragon 700 series provides up to 2x faster on-device AI processing with the help of their multi-core AI engine. The enhanced feature set includes support for better camera features, up to 30% power efficiency, better performance and battery life.
The ubiquitous wireless connectivity and the rise of network capacity offered by 5G, alongside with the computing power continually growing let us imagine revolutionary use cases for these technologies like autonomous robots or vehicles, drones, and many others.
An exciting but also scaring example was the facial recognition access control system that could have been tested by volunteers. Curious about its reliability, so I volunteered at the accreditation desk set up at the airport. And it worked like a charm! I was able to cross the access control smoothly skipping the queue ;) What we don’t know is the false positive rate and that could be interesting the GSMA provide few statics and results about that.
The Catalonia pavilion also introduced Barcelona as a 5G Smart City. In fact, the city hosts tens of research or pilot projects related to 5G. Among the various booths, the i2CAT foundation one was particularly relevant. The i2CAT foundation is a non-profit R&D and innovation center headed by Josep Paradells which promotes research activities on advanced Internet architecture, VLC, indoor positioning, augmented reality, E-Health, Software Defined Network (SDN) or Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). The center collaborates with companies, public administration, universities, and end-users.I2CAT plays a key role in 5G research and participates in 8 projects funded by the European Commission.
During the fair, they showed in videos and brochures the possibilities of 3D positioning indoors, immersive virtual content and the services offered by 5G they are developing.
Also, Daniels Camps, R&D coordinator at the foundation presented the H2020 5G XHaul project the center leads. 5G-XHaul proposes to develop a converged optical and wireless network solution able to connect Small Cells to the core network.
Internet of Things
Obviously, the Internet of Things has not been missed during the event with a whole pavilion dedicated to IoT, 1-day of GSMA seminars and the MWC IoT Tour, a guided tour of the exhibition to discover during an afternoon the “best IoT booths”.
I particularly enjoyed the NB-IoT workshop organized by the GSMA and Telefonica. During an afternoon, I can get a deep dive into NB-IoT network stack, node duty-cyle settings, wake-up modes, node power consumption, alongside with live demos using the Quectel BG96 development kit and the Telefonica NB-IoT OpenLab infra.
As each year, Nordic Semiconductor, one of the influential 802.15.4 radio module maker, highlighted their upcoming Bluetooth products features in a set of demos.
Two of them were showing mesh networks in action leveraging the nRF52840 chip and the Bluetooth Mesh protocol for the one, or their nRF5-Thread SDK based on the OpenThread for the second.
Even if both technologies were quite similar in term of network topology, power consumption, range and security features, they distinguished by their radio and the fact that Thread is IPv6-based but Bluetooth Mesh not. Also, Thread would be preferred for dense networks since Bluetooth Mesh always use flooding while Thread uses flooding only for multicast messages and automatically configures routes dynamically when nodes are added, removed or moved.
Besides, comparing BLE and Thread for P2P or star networks, BLE has a considerable advantage regarding power consumption, and it would be recommended over Thread.
The third demo unveiled the new nRF91 global multimode LTE-M / NB-IoT system-in-package (SiP) that is currently only available for carefully chosen key customers. The preview development kit release is planned for mid-2018 and the production-ready version for the end of the year.
The SiP features Arm Cortex-M33 ARMv8-M processor, a Qorvo custom RF front-end, GPS, and TrustZone application security into a tiny footprint of 16 X 10 X 1.2mm only. The TrustZone CryptoCell-310 security subsystem enables RoT (Root of Trust), cryptographic capabilities, and helps secure app data, firmware, and peripherals.
Visible Light Communications
Because it is my primary research field, I especially paid attention to the VLC technology. However, I was a bit disappointed since there was not so much news and fewer exhibitors or demo than during the previous edition.
Traditionally Oledcomm and PureLiFi were there. While Oledcomm has already unveiled at the CES in January its MyLifi® desk lamp PureLifi brought to Barcelona a DELL laptop prototype embedding a fully integrated LiFi-XC receiver. In the similar approach, they develop a smartphone case that hides the LiFi-XC dongle, making its use convenient even on smartphones. If they are only “one-shot” prototype, this is definitely the first step to reach VLC broad adoption.
LightBee is a Canarian startup that develops as smart wireless lock relying on VLC and a smartphone. This year, they exhibit their product at 4YFN, a side event dedicated to startups. By blinking its screen fastly, the smartphone sends a short code, a kind of token, that the door look receives through a photodiode, before granting access or not after demodulation and connecting to a remote server used for access right management. Thanks to the SME Instrument funding, they were able to fill several patents, get the necessary certification and start manufacturing a small series of prototypes. They target the house-sharing and hotel business.
Google Android
Like each year, the whole outdoor corridor between Hall 3 and Hall 4 welcomed the awesome Google Android Garden. This heaven for Android lovers is a place to relax, grab Android goodies or collector pins, eat an Oreo flavored ice-cream, and let Google show you just how cool Android is.
In Barcelona, Google came with the first Android Go smartphones, from Nokia and Alcatel. Android Go is a lightweight version Oreo Android operating system. It promises even more frequent updates for devices, extending them from 18 months to two years. Security patches will be distributed on a regular basis for at least three years.
Also, to further advance in the field of virtual and augmented reality, Google introduced ARCore, which is not only in Pixel smartphones but also the Samsung Galaxy since the S7 Edge. The beta stage for the first version has ended and ARCore 1.0 is available as well as SDK for developers. AR demos are also provided in collaboration with Porsche and FC Barcelona and it is rumored that Google could be planning to implement this into a new version of Google Glass.
Conclusion
Once again, MWC proved that it is an event not to be missed. This year MWC featured 5G, LPWAN, IoT, Drones, AI, Smart City, and Security. I noticed the absence of Sigfox, who didn’t travel to Catalonia. Besides, my feeling is that put alongside the previous editions, MWC’18 increased its difference with CES, with fewer announces, products, or exhibitors targeting consumers straightly.
As MWC is definitely a huge place, I probably missed some interesting stuff, so feel free to complete by posting a comment! In a few days, you will also find this article on the Rtone blog.
