Is 5G radiation going to kill us?

A few months back, I was talking about 5G in one of our employees' all-hands meeting. One employee stood up and asked, "Is 5G radiation going to kill us?". He added, "There are reports speculating a number of birds dying in Netherlands because of the radiations from 5G trials. What is your view on that?". I told him "New technologies such as 5G always throws a conundrum for humans to choose between evolution and existence. We exist as an organization not just to make money - we also have an obligation to our society. We should take necessary precautions when embracing new technologies and ensure that it doesn't challenge our very own existence". 

In the last two months, whenever I bring the topic of 5G during my conversations with people, this is a standard question that gets asked - "Is 5G radiation going to be harmful?". This article captures some credible research data available regarding the health impacts of 5G radiations. 

In US alone, close to 800,000 small cells are going to be deployed to support the various 5G usecases. That is equivalent of deploying one small cell in almost every street corner. There are at least two dozen lawsuits filed against FCC's ruling to accelerate 5G deployments in US. 

Independent Research

In 2010, a study funded by World Health Organization (WHO) reported that "Our review does not indicate an association between any health outcome and radio frequency electromagnetic field exposure from mobile phone base stations at levels typically encountered in people’s everyday environment" (Source: WHO)

In 2015, European Commission Scientific Community, published its findings on the impacts of RF radiation on humans. They said "Overall, the epidemiological studies on mobile phone RF Electromagnetic Field exposure do not show an increased risk of brain tumors. Furthermore, they do not indicate an increased risk for other cancers of the head and neck region." (Source: European Commission Scientific Community)

In 2018, National Toxicology Program (NTP) did a research and published their findings. They reported that "High exposure to radio frequency radiation (RFR) in rodents resulted in tumors in tissues surrounding nerves in the hearts of male rats, but not female rats or any mice". However, a senior scientist from NTP added a disclaimer "The levels and duration of exposure to RFR were much greater than what people experience with even the highest level of cell phone use, and exposed the rodents' whole bodies. So, these findings should not be directly extrapolated to human cell phone usage". (Source: National Institute of Environment Health Sciences).

In 2018, American National Cancer Institute (NCI) did some studies on wireless radio frequency and reported that "A limited number of studies have shown some evidence of statistical association of cell phone use and brain tumor risks, but most studies have found no association". NCI website says non-ionized radiations, such as the ones used in wireless cell phones, are not as impactful as the ones caused by ionized radiations such as X-Rays. (Source: American National Cancer Institute)

Data from Organizations Developing & Deploying 5G

Hans Vestberg, the CEO of Verizon, when responding to an interviewer, confidently said that he hasn't seen any impacts of radiations, so far. He also mentioned that his previous employer did a lot of research in this area and hasn't found any impacts due to radiations emitted by the mobile towers. 

Hans Vestberg's previous employer, Ericsson, is one of the leading vendors - carrying 40% of mobile traffic across the globe. Ericsson is also a key player in developing 5G radio technology. Ericsson claims to have done over 100 studies on the impacts of radiations. They published a report sharing details from the research done on 5G radiations. The report says, "The power levels of the radio signals transmitted by 5G radio equipment will be of similar or lower magnitude as those used in previous networks." Ericsson also says "5G devices will be designed and tested to comply with established radio wave exposure limits". 

Is 5G radiation going to kill us?!

If you are wondering "Did 5G really kill those 297 birds in Netherlands?", Well!, it turned out to be a false report. It looks like those birds died due to poisoning. 

So far, no study has clearly established a direct correlation between the radiations emitted by cellphone towers and the health impacts on humans. However, in pockets research confirmed that excessive exposure to radiation isn't good for human health. So, the farther you are from the antennas (cell phone towers, small cells and mobile devices), the better it is for you. Unfortunately, 5G's reliance on millimeter wave requires the small cell towers to be deployed closer to the users. We've to wait and watch, to understand the real health hazards caused by the 5G deployments. 

Also read: 5 misconceptions about 5G

Open source software for 5G networks

With IBM buying Redhat and Microsoft buying companies like Github, it is becoming very clear that open source software has strategic importance for leading players in the industry. Both service providers and technology solution providers are embracing open source, for accelerating growth and reducing the time to market. 5G involves a lot of network infrastructure upgrades. So, the open source communities are gearing up to solve the challenges in the areas of 5G Radio management, 5G NG Core infrastructure orchestration/management and Multi-Access Edge Cloud (MEC). Some of the communities are new, and many existing communities have reincarnated to solve 5G related challenges. 

Community Name: Open AirInterface (OAI)

• Started in: 2014
• Description: OpenAirInterface Software Alliance (OSA), is a consortium funded by service providers, network equipment vendors and universities to accelerate the research and development activities in 5G. OpenAirlnterface (OAI) provides open-source hardware and software wireless technology platforms (simulation, emulation, and realtime) for deployment of mock 5G networks. Some of the strategic areas of focus for the community include 5G Modem, Software-defined 5G system, Heterogeneous 5G Network, Large-scale Emulation, Internet of Things (IoT), Test and Measurement. OpenAirInterface implements 3GPP compliant radio access network (eNB, gNB and 4G, 5G UE) as well as the core network (EPC and 5G-CN).
• Current Status: The community is very active with 50+ developers contributing code and 8K commits made so far. 
• Key Drivers: Eurecom, Orange, Nokia Bell Labs, Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research, TCL and Fujitsu
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Community Name: 5G PPP (Private Public Partnership) Projects

• Started in: 2013
• Description: The 5G Public Private Partnership (5G PPP) is a joint initiative between the European Commission and European ICT industry (ICT manufacturers, telecommunications operators, service providers, SMEs and researcher Institutions). The 5G-PPP's charter is to deliver solutions, architectures, technologies and standards for the ubiquitous 5G communication infrastructures of the next decade. 5G PPP consortium is backed by a 1.4 billion Euro fund from the Horizon 2020 initiative. 5G PPP group has spun off 50+ projects focused on different verticals such as automative, manufacturing, media, energy, health and public safety and smart cities. These projects look at everything from soup to nuts in the area of 5G. 
• Current Status: 5G PPP has launched 3 phases of projects and established 50+ communities so far - Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3.  
• Key Drivers: Universities, R&D organizations, Network Equipment vendors.

Community Name: M-CORD

• Started in: 2013
• Description: M-CORD is an open source reference solution for carriers deploying 5G mobile wireless networks. It is a cloud-native solution built on SDN, NFV and cloud technologies. It includes both virtualized RAN functions and a virtualized mobile core (vEPC) to enable mobile edge applications and innovative services using a micro-services architecture. M-CORD is one of the projects under the CORD (Central Office Rearchitected as Data Center) project. It is driven by the Open Network Foundation (ONF)
• Current Status: The community has a few dozen contributors and they've converted all of the services to support containerization (Kubernetes). The community has also integrated M-CORD with ONAP. 
• Key Drivers: AT&T, Google, China Unicom, Juniper, NTT Group, Ciena, Radisys and several Network Equipment vendors / Service providers. 

Community Name: Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) 

• Started in: 2017
• Description: ONAP Platform provides capabilities for design, creation and lifecycle management of network services - both physical and virtual. It was formed by integrating the ECOMP framework opensourced by AT&T and the Open-O open source community. ONAP community is customizing the orchestrator to support use cases such as 5G Network Deployment, Network Slicing, Optimization and Automation
• Current Status: 125+ active contributors to the community.
• Key Drivers: Amdocs, AT&T, China Mobile, Bell Canada and a bunch of service providers / network equipment vendors. 

You can find MEC related open source software at https://tech.ginkos.in/2019/02/open-source-software-for-multi-access.html 

Differences between Cloud, Fog and MEC - Removing the Mist

Cloud, Fog and MEC - Are you too confused by these jargons? Are the cloud service providers spinning the yarn with new offerings?We were all brain washed over the last decade that moving our data and applications to the centralized cloud data centers is the right thing to do, to save costs. Now, the same folks who bull dozed our data and applications to the centralized cloud data centers are coming back to us and telling us, why we should keep our data and applications at the edge. In this article, we'll try to understand the differences between the Cloud, the Fog and the MEC infrastructure. 

Cloud

The term Cloud is well understood by the industry today. It represents a collection of compute, storage and networking gear available in a centralized location such as a data center. The cloud infrastructure may be built in one or more locations to meet the scalability, reliability and performance needs of applications. Cloud infrastructure can be maintained and run by public cloud service providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM and Alibaba or owned by private enterprises. Hosting an application in Cloud data centers might've been apt for web or mobile app based services in the past. However, a centralized cloud infrastructure may not be the apt solution for applications such as IOT or Smart Cars - because of their ultra low latency requirements. Hence, the industry started looking at Fog and MEC solutions. 

Fog

Fog doesn't replace Cloud, but it complements the existing Cloud infrastructure that is already available in many locations. Fog solves the latency and performance challenges in the cloud infrastructure. 

Fog architecture uses edge devices to perform significant amounts of compute, storage, and networking functions locally and routed over the Internet. Fog architecture allows the peer Fog nodes to communicate with each other and exchange data / intelligence. 

Fog standards are driven by OpenFog consortium. Fog infrastructure complements the several hundreds of cloud data centers that are already established. Fog connects the Cloud to "Things", by creating a hierarchical mesh in-between the Cloud and Things. Fog's objective is to improve the latencies, performance and scalability in an IOT deployment. 

Fog network decides to process data either locally at the edge infrastructure or in the centralized cloud infrastructure, based on the application's performance and latency requirements. 

MEC

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) and Fog are twin brothers trying to solve the same problem - to bring the cloud infrastructure closer to the users to improve performance and latency. (Read: 10 things you should know about MEC).

MEC is being standardized by ETSI group. Both Fog and MEC's standard bodies, OpenFog consortium and ETSI respectively, signed an agreement in Sep 2017 to collaborate with each other. Fog and MEC are complementary in nature. Fog architecture is hierarchical, whereas MEC architecture is flat (i.e, there may be multiple layers of Fog nodes in-between Cloud and "Things", whereas there is only one layer of MEC nodes deployed in the edge). Peer Fog nodes may communicate with each other (north-south/east-west), and may even communicate with other MEC nodes in the network. 

Fog connects Cloud to "Things" and specifically designed to meet the needs of IOT applications. MEC is catering to multiple industries and multiple services such as AR/VR, Live Video and Robotic surgeries, in addition to supporting IOT services.

Telcos' Cloud & MEC Play

Telecom service providers such as AT&T and Verizon, lost the public cloud services battle to players like Amazon, Google and Azure. They eventually admitted their defeat in the war and sold their cloud businesses to IBM, a few years back. Building and managing a public cloud service requires a lot of engineering and products DNA, which the telecom service providers lacked big time. The telecom service providers are used to engaging a vendor to build new infrastructure and rollout new services to customers.

MEC is providing yet another opportunity for telcos to relaunch the war. With applications such as IOT, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Smart Cars demanding low latencies, public cloud service providers with their data centers in a few locations within the country, cannot promise sub-millisecond latencies. Service providers with Central Offices (COs) located in multiple locations within a city are better equipped to host the new-age applications that demand ultra low latencies. The battle to deploy MECs near the edge and closer to the users has just started. Cloud service providers are aggressively pitching their solutions to the telco service providers. It is not clear whether the telcos will partner/resell the services from the cloud service providers or if they would deploy their own home grown infrastructure for MEC.

Who will win the game, eventually? Is it going to be the cloud service providers or the telcos? We'll have to wait and watch. 

To learn more about "Edge Computing" signup for the Udemy Course "An Introduction to Edge Computing".

Will WiFi get killed by 5G?

5G is getting marketed by vendors and service providers, as if, it is the next thing which is important for the humans and the society after food, water and shelter. 5G deployments have just started across the globe - however, there is a lot of debates around 5G. One such debate around 5G "If 5G is expected to be ubiquitous, will WiFi then get killed by 5G?" (Also read: 5G vs. WiFi6)

Will 5G kill WiFi?

We can safely assume that WiFi will not get killed by 5G, at least in the next 10 years. Here are the reasons why WiFi technology is going to last longer:

WiFi is a growing industry: According to a study commissioned by WiFi Alliance®, the economic value provided by Wi-Fi is nearly $2 trillion in 2018, and is expected to grow to almost $3.5 trillion by 2023. This valuation is equivalent of the combined valuation of the two large companies in the world Apple and Amazon. So, WiFi is not shrinking and continuing to be a growing industry.

Source: www.valueofwifi.com 

Technology Penetration: WiFi, as we know it today, got introduced in the year 1997 and it provided up to 2 Mbps speeds. In 1999, WiFi 802.11b standard was published, upgrading the WiFi speeds to 11 Mbps. WiFi has a wider foot print today - with deep penetration into our homes, enterprises, residential communities and in commercial establishments. WiFi has already reached the "ubiquitous" status.  5G is still in its nascent stages, with several operators focusing on doing trials and testing the waters with initial 5G deployments. It would take at least another 5 years for 5G to reach the current stage of 4G deployments, let alone matching the penetration of WiFi deployments. (Read 4G vs. 5G)

Cost of Deployment: WiFi technology uses "unlicensed spectrum" (2.4Ghz or 5 Ghz) vs. 5G which uses "licensed spectrum". 5G spectrum is going to be costly because of the need for the broad range of spectrum, to support speed as well as coverage. Service providers would have to cough several billions of dollars to get the 5G spectrum. So, WiFi will be lot more cheaper when compared to 5G. 

Speed and Customer Experience: 5G speeds are going to be significantly higher (1 Gbps+), when compared to 4G (40 - 600 Mbps). However, it cannot still beat the great speeds offered by WiFi. The theoretical maximum speed of 802.11ac, the latest WiFi standard, is roughly 7 Gbps. In real world situations, you may see somewhere around 1.7 Gbps and 2.5 Gbps, with 802.11ac WiFi. An 802.11ac WiFi router, connected to a Fiber network may offer a higher speed, when compared to 5G network.

Devices Support: WiFi is supported today by most devices that connect to Internet. Moreover, there are some devices (such as iPods and Chromecast) that connect only to the WiFi network. These devices aren't going to vanish overnight from the world. It is going to take at least a decade to slowly phase out these WiFi only devices. 

Where would 5G replace WiFi?

WiFi may get replaced by 5G in Enterprises use cases for multiple reasons:

1. Enterprises can afford to buy a 5G small cell device (small cell tower) and deploy it in house to offer 5G coverage to its employees, slowly replacing WiFi with 5G. Service providers can themselves deploy 5G in Enterprises for cell densification and Enterprises can reuse that infrastructure to avail Private Wireless network services. Service Providers can carve out a 5G network slice for the Enterprise related services. 
2. Today, WiFi networks are deployed and managed separately by the IT administrators in Enterprises. Reusing 5G infrastructure, instead of corporate WiFi would reduce the administrative overhead for the Enterprises. 
3. Today, WiFi provides more security for Enterprises as they have complete control over what is going on over their private WiFi network. With 5G, because of the Service Based Architecture (SBA), Enterprises can manage their 5G based Private Wireless Network, through APIs - providing the same levels of controls they had on their WiFi network. 
4. Because of the evolution of the WiFi standards, Enterprises have to continuously upgrade their WiFi gear, once every 3 - 5 years. With 5G, that overhead can be outsourced to the Service Providers. Service Providers will take care of upgrading their wireless infrastructure periodically. 
5. The desk phones providing VOIP services can potentially vanish with Enterprises rolling out 5G based Private Wireless Network. Each employee becomes accessible through their wireless mobile phones, wherever they are - instead of having to be glued to their desks. 

Where would 5G complement WiFi?

5G can complement WiFi, in some use cases. For example, in Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) use cases, the customer premise equipment (CPE) can connect to the 5G network for Internet connectivity and can locally offer connectivity services through WiFi. Considering the huge bandwidth offered by 5G (1 Gbps), it can potentially serve a large number of WiFi users or WiFi enabled devices. 5G may increase the penetration of eMBB in public places and residential communities. 

5G can complement WiFi in Fixed Wireless use cases (such as the 5G Home service launched by Verizon, recently). 5G would eliminate the need for service providers to dig the lawns of their customers to provide broadband services. With 5G, service providers can reduce the cost of their dispatch operations and enable customers to activate their Internet connectivity services through self-serve mechanisms. 

There are still a lot of misconceptions and debates going around 5G. The battle between 5G and WiFi isn't going to be like the battle between the David and Goliath. It is going to be a symbiotic relationship like the relationship between the remoras and the sharks in the ocean. Both the technologies 5G and WiFi are going to thrive together for a long time to come. 

Open Source Software for Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC)

When a new technology change happens, you can immediately see some open source communities mushrooming to solve the challenges through software. Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) isn't an exception. Acknowledging the importance of edge computing infrastructure, Linux Foundation (LF) created an umbrella organization called LF Edge to host edge computing open source projects such as Akraino Edge Stack, EdgeX Foundry and Project EVE. In addition, consortiums such as OpenFog and Cloud Native Compute Foundation (CNCF) are creating reference framework and software stack for MEC deployments.  (Also read: 10 things that you should know about MEC)

This article captures information on open source communities developing MEC reference stack.

Community Name: Akraino Edge Stack

• Started in: 2018
• Description: Akraino Edge Stack aims to create an open source software stack that supports high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications. The Akraino Edge Stack is designed to improve the state of edge cloud infrastructure for enterprise edge, OTT edge, and carrier edge networks. It will offer users new levels of flexibility to scale edge cloud services quickly, to maximize the applications and functions supported at the edge, and to help ensure the reliability of systems that must be up at all times.
• Current Status: The community is planning to share the first software release in mid-2019.
• Key Drivers: ARM, AT&T, Baidu, Dell EMC, Ericsson, HP, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Juniper, Nokia, NTT, Qualcomm, Radisys, Redhat, Samsung.

Community Name: EdgeX Foundry

• Started in: 2018
• Description: EdgeX Foundry is an open source project that is building a common open platform for IoT edge computing. The interoperable platform enables an ecosystem of plug-and-play components that unifies the marketplace and accelerates the deployment of IoT solutions across a wide variety of industrial and enterprise use cases.
• Current Status: The community has about 50 members and has delivered 3 software releases so far.
• Key Drivers: Analog Devices, Dell EMC and Samsung.

Community Name: Project EVE

• Started in: 2018
• Description: Project EVE (Edge Virtualization Engine) provides a cloud-native based virtualization engine for developing and deploying containers for industrial edge computers. Project EVE is based on Zededa’s EVx edge virtualization engine, which currently runs on edge hardware from partners including Advantech, Lanner, SuperMicro, and Scalys.
• Current Status: The community was launched in Jan'19 and it is looking for partners to make the software available in first half of 2019.
• Key Drivers: Zededa.

Community Name: StarlingX

• Started in: 2018
• Description: StarlingX is a complete cloud infrastructure software stack for the edge used by the most demanding applications in industrial IOT, telecom, video delivery and other ultra-low latency use cases. It is supported by the Openstack Foundation (OSF)
• Current Status: The community launched its first software release in Oct 2018.
• Key Drivers: Intel and Windriver.

Community Name: ioFog

• Started in: 2018
• Description: ioFog makes it simple to deploy and manage any application or containerized microservices at the edge.  ioFog allows users to “bring their own edge” by enabling any device or hardware to become a secure software platform.
• Current Status: The community was launched by Edgeworx in Oct 2018.
• Key Drivers: Edgeworx
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Community Name: openVolcano

• Started in: 2017
• Description: The openVolcano platform aims at supporting mobile edge and fog computing services in 5G-ready infrastructures. It is part of Europe's Horizon 2020 5G-PPP projects. OpenVolcano platform provides in-network programmability capabilities for off-loading, virtualization and monitoring of services in a fog environment. 
• Current Status: The community hasn't launched any new software revisions since Mar 2018.
• Key Drivers: European Commission and European ICT industry (ICT manufacturers, telecommunications operators, service providers, SMEs and researcher Institutions). Horizon 2010 & 5G-PPP members (https://5g-ppp.eu).

In addition to the above open source communities for MEC, existing open source communities focusing on network virtualization such as OpenStack, M-CORD, OpenShift, ONAP and OPNFV are also competing to solve the MEC deployment, management and orchestration challenges. 

10 things you should know about Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC)

What is MEC?

MEC stands for Multi-access Edge Computing. It was originally called as Mobile Edge Compute. However, due to the general applicability of an edge compute infrastructure for additional wireline use-cases, it was later renamed as Multi-Access Edge Computing. MEC helps service providers to bring application oriented capabilities closer to the users and support several latency sensitive use cases from the edge. MEC plays a huge role in 5G networks, as 5G is expected to support less than 10 milliseconds latency. (Read: Eight 5G Currencies)

What are the benefits of MEC?

• Reduces latency of applications 
• Allows local policy management 
• Provides security for IOT services, by distributing the attack surface
• Improves reliability of application and network services, by offering a distributed infrastructure for service failover
• Provides real time access to data locally, in an IOT environment
• Reduces operational costs, by avoiding the need to build costly data centers
• Improved application performance and user experiences, as applications are run in local compute infrastructure 

What role does MEC play in reducing the latency?

IHS Markit, a global research organisation, defines edge compute as being within 20 milliseconds of the end user or device. MEC is able to achieve such low latencies, by hosting applications and services near to the end user / device. 

Verizon recently announced that they were able to reduce application latency by half, by deploying MEC infrastructure. 

How does MEC help Service Providers to differentiate themselves over Over the Top (OTT) vendors?

Telcos are at a great advantage of supporting low latencies with their infrastructure presence in central offices and cell towers, when compared to OTT service providers. 

OTT service providers have partial coverage for edge compute with distributed data centers that are within the 20 milliseconds to 50 milliseconds range, while telcos can hit 5 milliseconds to 20 milliseconds.

A few service providers with an "engineering DNA" would build a home grown infrastructure for MEC. However, many service providers would end up deploying the MEC infrastructure from off-the-shelf MEC vendor products or by partnering with existing Cloud Service Providers. 

What are some of the use cases supported by MEC?

- Vehicle to Everything (V2X)  (Autonomous Cars)

- Radio Access Network (RAN) aware Video Optimization

- Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality

- Hosting Enterprise applications

- Edge Video Orchestration

- Massive IOT

- Surveillance & Security Services

How does MEC benefit autonomous cars?

If a network has a 100 milliseconds delay and a car is running at 120 km/hr, if the car detects danger, it would travel over 3 meters further before taking any action. This would potentially mean an accident or a car crash. In order to avoid such crashes or accidents with the current network, the cars need to have larger gaps. With 5G,  its single digit millisecond latency will make self driving scenarios safer, while improving road throughput (number of cars/vehicles handled by the road) at the same time.

Is MEC specific to 5G deployments?

No. MEC can also be deployed along with 4G networks. In fact, MEC can also be deployed in wired environments (for ex., within an enterprise) (Read: 5G Deployments Status)

What are some communities trying to standardize the MEC stack?

Open Edge Computing Initiative, Cloud Native Compute Foundation and ETSI are communities that are involved in standardizing the MEC stack. 

Who are the vendors creating an edge computing stack?

https://tech.ginkos.in/2018/11/top-mec-vendors-to-watch-race-to-edge.html 

What are the open source communities for edge computing stack?

Akraino Edge Stack, EdgeX Foundry, Project Edge Virtualization Engine and StartlingX