5G has been in the spotlight at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) for several years now. The next one, which will be held from Monday February 27 to March 2 in Barcelona, will be no exception. More than two years after the commercial opening of 5G in France, it will above all be a question of developments in the latest generation mobile networks.
5G is indeed only in its infancy. As with 4G, the new standard takes several years to achieve all the hopes placed in it in terms of throughput or latency. 2023 should thus become the year of 5G standalone (SA), that is to say “pure” 5G, without coexistence with 4G in the core network of operators.
This 5G SA should pave the way for truly disruptive use cases in the fields of Industry 4.0, telemedicine, smart city or autonomous vehicles. Orange, which has already launched a 5G SA network in Spain, intends to demonstrate it in Barcelona.
A braille system to follow a football match
Some 500 days before the Olympics, Orange will offer an immersive marathon simulation experience in Paris. Under a 30 m dome2 equipped with a 360° screen and a spatial audio system, visitors will feel the sensations of a marathon runner running through emblematic Parisian locations.
Blind or visually impaired people cannot be excluded from major sporting events, such as matches at the Vélodrome de Marseille. To go further than audio description, Orange Vélodrome’s 5G Lab and the start-up Touch2See have designed a tablet which, equipped with a magnetic disc, reproduces the movements of the ball in real time.
The supporter can thus with his hand know where the action is taking place on the field and understand the tactical movements of the players. This device, which uses 5G, edge computing and artificial intelligence (AI), is based on the cameras of the Professional Football League and sports data from specialist Stats Perform.
No metaverse without 5G
With its low latency and the bandwidth capacity it offers, 5G will be one of the mainstays of metaverse development. On the Orange stand at the MWC, visitors equipped with a virtual reality headset will be immersed in an immersive universe. They will be joined by a participant present in the Orange store in Malaga, located at the end of the Iberian Peninsula, nearly 1,000 kilometers away.
A dancer equipped with a motion capture suit will guide the group through this metaverse. The movements of the dancer and the avatars of the participants will be projected in real time on a large screen.
A digital twin to pilot a cyber dog
The use cases for 5G are not just mainstream. In the factory of the future, 5G makes it possible to collect data from a multitude of connected sensors. AI technologies then process and analyze this data for the purposes of predictive maintenance or quality control (computer vision).
Mixed reality (fusion of physical and virtual worlds) and robotics, combined with 5G and digital twin technologies, can be used in industrial environments to train employees, monitor machines or project themselves into hard-to-reach industrial sites or dangerous.
Using a 5G-connected Microsoft HoloLens2 or Meta Quest Pro headset, visitors will view a digital twin of the Xiaomi CyberDog robot in a mixed reality environment. Visitors will be able to control the robot remotely and direct it from one place to another by acting on its digital avatar.
Securing industrial processes
The development of 5G can only go hand in hand with cybersecurity. Mobile networks that serve critical industrial processes must benefit from maximum protection. Players in transport, energy or manufacturing, however, have the particularity of having two types of networks: traditional IT networks and operational networks (OT) used to control and monitor industrial equipment.
Increasingly interconnected to IT and often less secure, this OT part presents vulnerabilities exploited by cybercriminals to infiltrate industrial information systems. To raise awareness, Orange Cyberdefense, a subsidiary of the operator, will simulate a cyberattack at the MWC by entering a closed water tank through a pump system.