5G is coming! You’ve likely heard the breathless hype. This super-fast, fifth-generation of wireless technology will indeed reshape entire industries, with significant implications for plastics material use, and bring with it exciting new capabilities. But, ironically…not so fast.
Network infrastructure needs
For 5G’s millimeter wave (mmWave) signals to work as billed, networks are going to need an entirely new infrastructure of base stations and transmitters, stretching out in every direction imaginable. Hardware suppliers such as Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia are already investing billions of dollars into building these point-to-point stations.
After all, mmWaves––unlike current 4G signals––tend to max out at a few hundred meters, and they can’t go around corners or through things like walls and bad weather. This infrastructure need offers a huge opportunity for those with the materials, including advanced plastics, that can help to make them work.
In an interview at January’s CES 2019 Show in Las Vegas, Intel Corp.’s Cassio Tiete noted that “5G is much more than ‘another G.’ There’s a whole revolution behind the scenes with the network”––making it agile and scalable, among other things. Tiete, Intel’s senior director of 5G Market Development, Cloud, Network & IoT, said that to realize the technology’s potential, “networks will need to be rebuilt in many cases.”
This means a need for a huge number of new microcell towers, routers and flat-panel arrays with antennas. Joel Matsco, Pittsburgh-based Market Segment Manager—Electronics & Appliances for materials supplier Covestro, estimates the need will be for anywhere from 10 to 100 times the current number of such stations.
5G technological benefits
The potential is staggering. A 2017 IHS Markit study commissioned by Qualcomm predicted that the transition to 5G could produce up to $12.3 trillion worth of goods and services enabled by the technology. It will in turn boost global GDP by some $3 trillion and generate approximately 22 million jobs by 2035. 5G has much faster mobile data speeds––up to 10 gigabytes per second, or eventually more than 10 times quicker than those of today’s 4G. It will allow consumers to download full-length, high-definition movies in mere minutes. And 5G’s low latencies (lag times) and robust connectivity is expected to enable a host of technologies, from artificial intelligence and machine learning to smart cities, autonomous vehicles, smart energy grids, and health care such as telehealth and remote surgery.
Additionally, 5G is expected to accelerate the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT is the interconnecting of virtually all machines and devices through the internet. Analysts at DBS Group Research project that the number of such linked devices worldwide will soar to 125 billion by 2030, up from about 11 billion last year.
What 5G companies are up to
During Qualcomm’s media event at the CES 2019 show, Pete Lancia, vice president of corporate communications, declared, “We’re in the year of 5G, finally.” He noted that he expected some 20-plus devices to launch 5G versions in 2019, even if the networks won’t be fully in place yet to make the most of the touted performance.
Verizon, for example, turned on its 5G Home service, “the world’s first 5G network,” last October in certain parts of Houston, Sacramento, Los Angeles and Indianapolis. It launched 5G in parts of Chicago and Minneapolis in early April. The current areas of focus are high-density, open-space, urban environments.
China, meanwhile, is expected to lead the world in widespread adoption of the technology. It’s a point underscored by the high-profile political battle being waged (over alleged security concerns) by the U.S. government against China’s Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., a major supplier of key 5G technology.
So, what can plastics bring to the party?
The materials used to house wireless transmitters can have a major impact on radio frequency (RF) signal transmission at the higher frequencies favored by 5G. “Because of material interference at microwave frequencies,” Matsco said, “weakened signals struggle to pass through walls or travel around corners.” He notes that dissipation factor (df) and dielectric constant (dk) are both key material properties that affect RF transmission.
Covestro, the world’s largest supplier of polycarbonate (PC) resins and blends, among other engineering polymers, is seeing an influx in customer requests for PC property data for this application. The required 5G hardware, after all, will be needed both inside and outside, in all types of environments.
“We are optimizing around df/dk at the frequency bands of choice for 5G base stations and performance factors,” Matsco said in a recent interview. “The key is to balance a host of various requirements.” These include flame retardancy (since a number of these stations will be attached to buildings), weather resistance (e.g., exposure to wind, rain, snow and ultraviolet light), and impact strength (understanding that some enclosures will be expected to withstand temperatures far below zero Celsius in certain extreme cases).
“You want the front covers of these stations to be as permeable to RF as possible, to minimize material interference,” Matsco said, “and this favors polycarbonate.” The antennas will get smaller as one goes up in frequency bands, he also noted. “The needs will be different for almost every application.”
One technology that aims to help improve the strength and consistency of 5G signals is called “beamforming.” Beamforming, according to the IEEE technology association, “is a traffic-signaling system for cellular base stations that identifies the most efficient data-delivery route to a particular user, and it reduces interference for nearby users in the process.” This will involve installing new antennas in multiple areas of a device, with on-board chip sets serving to form beams, a process that Matsco says “will probably take years to perfect.”
5G initially will find the most success in areas with high populations and device density, he suggests, such as in public spaces like in stadiums, on mass transit, in airports and plazas, etc. By 2022-23 or so, it is likely to play a bigger role in vehicles (again, starting in urban areas), and will help to facilitate the implementation of autonomous vehicles and smart city technologies.
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Other areas impacted by 5G
With 5G, data pipes will need to get much bigger, as they’ll be moving gigabytes rather than just megabytes of data at high speeds. Bandwidth demand is likely to grow fivefold in the next year, and by tenfold in the next few years, Matsco estimates. He likens the repackaging of the digital signal occurring in the 5G network to more densely packing contents on a bigger, faster truck.
While China is investing massively in advancing 5G technology, its efforts will follow policy and regulation. The United States, on the other hand, offers the most use-case diversity, according to Matsco, with a lot of different geographies and a diversity of end-market industries such as mobility, healthcare, entertainment, etc.
“The U.S. could see a more chaotic roll-out, but the technology has the potential to mature faster and more broadly than in other regions,” Matsco predicts. Europe, in the meantime, is currently a laggard in 5G.
Ignacio Contreras, director of 5G marketing for tech giant Qualcomm, said in an interview at this year’s CES show that, for reasons of transmissivity, metal will be the least desirable material to use for the 5G’s new base stations. This will open the door to glass or plastic in those applications.
That leaves firms such as Covestro and other polymer producers to gear up to meet the demanding needs of tomorrow’s 5G revolution.
Resources
An overview of Huawei 5G: The battle over 5G commercial devices is coming, Feb 25, 2019.
Beamforming, Wikipedia.
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Very interesting. I have left my colleagues in R & D in RTP Company in the US this article.
interesting blog!!