December 9, 2021

IoT Development Platforms Empowered by 5G Network

Existing 4G networks employ the Internet of Things (IoT) applications, and they are constantly evolving to meet the needs of future IoT applications. The 5G networks are predicted to vastly increase today’s IoT, boosting cellular operations, IoT security, and network issues while also propelling the Internet’s future to the edge. Existing IoT solutions are up against several obstacles, including a huge number of node connections, security, and new standards.

The next generation of “5G” is still in its early stages of research, with new radio access technology (RAT), antenna enhancements, increased frequency utilization, and network re-architecting as goals. However, significant progress and the evolution of LTE will bring on a drastic change in the fundamentals of wireless networks in the next few years – a generational shift in technology, designs, and business processes.

5G and IoT Background and Current Research

A variety of wireless technologies, including 2G/3G/4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and others, have been employed in heterogeneous IoT applications, connecting via wireless communication technologies. IoT is widely used, although 3G and 4G are not fully optimized for IoT applications. 4G has substantially improved the capability of cellular networks in terms of providing Internet access to IoT devices. As next-generation networks, 5G networks and standards are expected to address issues that 4G networks have, such as more complicated communication, device computational capabilities, and intelligence, among other things, to meet the needs of smart environments, industry 4.0, and other emerging technologies.

5G Wireless Networks

5G will connect billions of smart devices to the Internet, allowing for enormous IoT. The wireless software-defined networking (WSDN) paradigm can construct 5G networks, which will give a more flexible and speedier network. The Internet of Things can bring smart services to users. Also increasing security and privacy concerns and posing new problems to standardization and governance organizations. 5G technology has the potential to greatly extend IoT beyond what is now possible. Through intelligent sensors connected to the 5G wireless network, IoT devices will be able to interact with the smart environment on a whole new level. With the quickest connectivity and capacity, the 5G wireless network can expand the scope and scale of IoT coverage.

IoT enabled by 5G

By linking billions of smart devices to establish a truly enormous IoT, in which smart devices mutually interact and share data without human help, 5G can make substantial contributions to the future IoT. Currently, the heterogeneous area of applications makes it difficult for IoT to determine whether devices will be able to meet the application’s needs.

IoT Architecture in 5G

The 5G-IoT has planned to give applications with real-time, on-demand, all online, reconfigurable, and sociable experiences, which necessitates that the 5G-IoT architecture can coordinate end-to-end, with agile, autonomous, and intelligent operation at each phase. The 5G-IoT designs projects to bring the following benefits:

Provide logically isolated networks by application requirements.
Use a cloud-based radio access network (Cloud-RAN) to rebuild a radio access network (RAN) to enable huge connections for many standards and to add RAN functionalities on-demand, as required by 5G.
Simplify the fundamental network architecture to enable network function configuration on demand.

5G enabled IoT Platform Requirements

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming our daily lives by enabling a wide range of unique applications that rely on ecosystems of smart and highly diverse devices. Numerous research efforts perform on many tough subjects for the 5G IoT in the last few years, and the primary requirements of IoT include:

Future IoT applications, such as high-definition video streaming, virtual reality (VR), or augmented reality (AR), and so on, will require greater data rates of roughly 25 Mbps to ensure acceptable performance.
To allow fine-grained bandwidth network decomposition using NFV, the 5G-IoT demands increased scalability to boost network scalability.
Very low latency is necessary for 5G-IoT applications such as tactile Internet, augmented reality, video games, and so on, with a latency of roughly 1ms.
5G-IoT reliability resilience requires new coverage and handover efficiency for IoT devices and applications users.
In contrast to the general security strategy of protecting connection and user privacy in future IoT mobile payment and digital wallet apps, the 5G IoT demands an updated security approach to improve network security.
Low energy solutions are essential for the 5G enabled IoT to support billions of low-power and low-cost IoT devices.
In the 5G-IoT, a large number of devices connect, necessitating 5G’s ability to support the successful transmission of messages within a specific time and region.
Because of its great mobility, 5G-IoT should be able to accommodate a large number of device-to-device connections.

The current state of IoT assumes that all raw data by IoT device uploads in the cloud, where it processes by cloud servers to extract relevant knowledge using data analysis methodologies.

Enabling Critical Technologies

From physical communication to IoT applications, 5G enabled IoT covers several critical enabling mechanisms. Many research efforts have been done in recent years on both 5G technology and the future IoT. Several critical 5G enabling technologies are being made to provide new infrastructure and design required by the future IoT.

Spectrum Sharing and Interference Management on Top Scale

In many circumstances, a large number of 5G IoT devices will be densely deployed. This will be based on the 5G-IoT architecture to ensure coverage and traffic load imbalance. As a result, spectrum sharing and interference management is a critical 5G-IoT enabler. In the 5G IoT, the Het-Net is a viable approach for interference management.

Massive MIMO (Multiple-input, Multiple-output) is essential for increasing spectrum efficiency. Several, sophisticated MIMO approaches develop multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO), very large MIMO (VLM), and others. MU-MIMO includes 3GPP LTE-A, which can greatly increase network capacity by using a larger number of antennas at the base station.

Other 5G IoT Enabling Techniques

Machine-Type Communications (MTC), millimeter Wave (mm-Wave), mobile edge computing, Software Defined Networking (SDN), and Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) play a key part in the future 5G systems for the IoT.
Optimization approaches in 5G IoT, such as convex optimization, heuristic methods, evolutionary algorithms (EAs), machine learning methods, and artificial neural networks, are among the major enabling techniques (ANNs). Key enabling approaches impact more by these ways.

Future Research Trends and Challenges

Although 5G provides features that can meet the needs of the future IoT, it also introduces a new set of exciting research difficulties, such as 5G-IoT architecture, trusted communications between devices, security issues, and so on. The 5G-IoT combines several technologies and is having a big impact on IoT applications. The following are some of the probable research problems and future developments in 5G-IoT:

Issues with Standardization

The 5G-IoT proposes a large number of IoT solutions. The standardization of 5G-IoT will make application implementation and development easier. There is a lack of consistency and standardization for both IoT systems and applications. This is due to the different nature of networks and devices in 5G-IoT. Many obstacles and challenges remain in the way of implementing these ideas. The challenges that 5G enabling IoT standardization faces divides into four categories:

The form and design of IoT products, big data analysis tools, are all examples of IoT devices, or platforms.
The term “connectivity” refers to the networks and protocols that connect IoT devices.
Business models that are projected to meet the needs of eCommerce, vertical, horizontal, and consumable markets are being developed.
Control, data collecting, and analytical functions are all lethal applications.

Concerns about Security and Privacy

Authentication, authorization, device access management, and privacy preservation are all security and privacy challenges in 5G-IoT. Existing 3GPP (Generation partnership project) networks are primarily concerned with functional node specifications and abstract interfaces. 5G networks will act as fundamental infrastructure rather than 4G or 3GPP networks in 5G-IoT. Because of this security assurance will be a significant concern. There is currently no fully fresh development. Extending the security specification is necessary for the 3GPP.

In the presence of eavesdroppers, trusted communications over 5G networks will be a difficult research trend. IoT security was once thought to be a high-layer problem that tackles cryptography. Although, device security is now emerging as a promising line of defense for achieving 5G-IoT.
Flexible and scalable security architecture will focus on new trust models and identity management, service-oriented security, security assessment. Also on low-delay mobility security, and user privacy protections, from the physical layer to new business models.
The security that is energy efficient, the 5G-IoT involves billions of resource-constrained devices. This can’t use computational security solutions, lightweight security solutions for resource-constrained devices will be an important research trend.

Conclusion

The requirement of 1000-fold traffic growth meets 5G on a long-term basis. 5G will enable consumers with access data rates comparable to fiber and “zero” latency. 100 billion gadgets will be able to connect using 5G. 5G will be able to provide a consistent experience in scenarios, including extremely high traffic volumes, connection density, and mobility. 5G will also be able to deliver intelligent optimization based on services and users’ awareness. And also allow us all to realize the goal of 5G, by improving energy and cost efficiency hundreds of times.