Edge computing and 5G

Have you heard about the “news” of autonomous cars, smart factories, e-health and smart cities, but you still have a feeling like “nothing” is happening yet?

Technology limitations are a serious reason for these news to be late. Edge computing is a solution for the lack of computation power at the place of need, in contrast to a far located cloud.

The 5G communication is a solution for high speed, low latency network communication while supporting connection for a huge number of devices at the same time. The number of connected devices is expected to grow extremely in the upcoming years.

What is Edge computing?

Applications are hosted far away from places, where they are actually used. Data centers are located at few places on each continent and they serve requests from places which are tens of thousands kilometres away. That practically means a respond delivery within hundreds or thousands of milliseconds which might be unacceptable for latency sensitive applications that require respond from server in up to tens of milliseconds.

There will be small data centers located in last-mile infrastructure for scenarios, where low latency is required and communication will occur between ends that are just a few kilometres away.

For example, instead of data center located in Sweden, information about recent traffic will be delivered from the closest base station next to the highway.

What is 5G?

Nowadays, the TV is full of 4G (LTE) commercials where mobile internet reaches amazing download speed. But in the meantime, the requirements have increased and there’s a new kid around the block — the new communication standard known as 5G.

The 5G connection might bring a huge increase in download/upload speed per one device — compared to 4G (LTE) — but it will definitely bring the capability of connecting billions of new devices and lowering latencies to levels like Wi-Fi has, ones of milliseconds.

Thanks to 5G, devices like fridge, washing machine, car, toothbrush, coffee machine, sensors in fields, parking lot sensors, street lamps and many more are going to be connected. Currently, the 4G (LTE) cannot handle them all.

Imagine four trucks, each with 30 tons, rolling at 80km/h on the highway with just 10 metres safety distance between them to safe fuel, with no truck drivers. In case of a collision, when the first truck initiates emergency braking, the other trucks must be informed about it immediately to start breaking as well. This must happen in a blink of an eye, because every millisecond counts.

How far edge computing is?

In late 2018, Ericsson started a cooperation with 80 partners around the world to operate 22 locations with edge computing services. More…

How far 5G is?

Auctions for rights started in USA and EU during 2018 and will continue in 2019. These rights for frequency use will allow 5G wavelengths in regions, which signals early operations as these rights are expensive and investor will require payback for their investments. More… and even more…

Do you still think the future is far away? Are you ready for tomorrow?

New technology innovations are emerging every day and they constantly change businesses and life of people around the globe. You can wait and read the headlines of tomorrow or be the one who creates the headlines of future together with a partner in technology and innovation like Touch4IT :).