5G & IoT, Opportunities for Industry

Used for monitoring various environmental parameters in both fixed and mobile installations, these devices can use existing mobile networks and later 5G networks with enhanced capability.

Designed with several years’ battery life for ‘deploy and forget’ applications or permanently powered, IoT sensors will be very useful in smart factory environments where production line monitoring (e.g. cameras, sensors) can be added to existing operations to improve efficiency, safety and quality monitoring.

The wide range of IoT devices, applications and services opens up many new possibilities, for example:

• health & safety monitoring workers on-site or remote locations

• food and medicine supply chain temperature monitoring

• building management system upgrades (no new wiring required)

• smart city - utility metering/street light/parking/ garbage bin monitoring

• traffic and footfall measurement for infrastructure/ advertising campaign planning

• tracking pallets/forklifts in a factory

• remote oil/water tank level monitoring

Many wireless IoT applications can be implemented using current 4G systems and as requirements grow the sensors can be added to fulfill the many monitoring or control needs. A huge array of different types of sensors are available to monitor everything imaginable from temperature, weight, distance, pressure, flow rate, presence, tilt, vibration, leaks – even the colour content of light and much more.

One example, most old (and new) buildings lack the wiring infrastructure to add simple monitoring functions –it is uneconomic to add conventional wiring as an afterthought for some monitoring function, say, emergency exit door open alarm. However, adding a wireless IoT sensor solution is a quick, easy solution for long term monitoring solutions or for difficult to access locations. Wireless IoT allows us to do things that are simply not feasible today.

Combining wireless IoT monitoring, the additional capacity of 5G with powerful Machine Learning (ML) algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) hosted in cloud computing platforms we will see truly innovative applications performing predictive analytics for detecting tell-tale signs of faults before they happen or triggering action maintenance teams. This can be applied to monitoring and maintenance of lifts, escalators, vehicles and machinery of all sorts, industrial process operations, buildings, tunnels, bridges, roads, railways, utilities and so on, enabling new business opportunities.

IoT security risks are regularly overblown and should not be conflated with Secure Mobile IoT. Mobile networks are much more secure for having the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) or new embedded ‘eSIM’ to securely identify and authenticate network endpoint users and encrypt data. Real security risks can be contained with proper design, common sense (like not hard-coding passwords) and appropriate operational protocols, these steps are detailed in the GSMA IoT Security Guidelines. Furthermore, the telecoms industry has long experience with managing vulnerable endpoints – that’s the definition of a phone. SIMs and IoT devices (or phones) can be securely linked together and monitored to restrict endpoint service activity from the mobile network, badly behaving devices and services can be blocked and blacklisted accordingly. With basic network security precautions, it simply won’t be possible for a hacked IoT water dispenser to gain access to the corporate network and download customer data or launch a denial of service attack on some distant website.

5G, IoT and corresponding technological advances we see today is the result of years of incremental advances in technology, software and communications standardization. Together they build 5G into a key foundation for Industry 4.0 across many verticals, strengthening the positive contribution to future economic growth and a better future.