The Importance of 5G for Smart Cities and Smart Surveillance (English)

Tyler Kern (00:01): 

Welcome to Connected World, a podcast created for engineers to learn about the latest technology trends, creating a safer, sustainable, productive, and connected future. 

Tyler Kern (00:11): 

Hello and welcome to Connected World, a podcast from the experts at TE Connectivity. I'm your host today, Tyler Kern. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of the show. Now coming up on this episode, I'll be joined by Rickard Barrefelt, and we're going to discuss the importance of 5G for the future of smart city, specifically focusing in on outdoor smart surveillance. So Rickard, thanks so much for joining me. Welcome to the podcast. 

Rickard Barrefelt (00:44): 

Thank you, Tyler. And it's great to be here. 

Tyler Kern (00:46): 

Well, I am thrilled to have you on the podcast and Rickard, You have such a long and lengthy title and do so many different things that I couldn't actually remember the entire thing. And so give us your full title and tell us a little bit more about your role at TE Connectivity. 

Rickard Barrefelt (01:01): 

Yeah, so I started at TE as a field application engineer and became a manager for the EMEA region, which is Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Additionally to that in the last year, we've also added on India as part of this region. So I'm leading a field application engineering team. Lately, I've also been assigned to lead the global IOT initiative. So as a global IT [inaudible 00:01:24] and for global sales. So the title is long, but that was a kind of short explanation on what I try to do and achieve here at TE. 

Tyler Kern (01:31): 

Right. Excellent. Excellent. So you're just the person we want to talk to when it comes to 5G and then also have that's enabling outdoor smart surveillance. And we're going to discuss all of that here on the episode today. But first and foremost, I want to focus in just to get us started in a little bit more of a broad sense, Rickard. So how does the increasing availability of 5G impact our ability to really build and develop smart cities? 

Rickard Barrefelt (01:54): 

It's a good question. I think we can start by comparing what 4G and 5G is and where the main differences are. Generally, 4G was an extension of 3G to enhance the kind of mobile data transmission, and then improve the way we use our handsets and computers and so on. Well 5G is really enabling internet of things. And internet of things is of course internet with everything. So it could be a massive amount of nodes and divide as being connected to the internet. So one big portion of 5G, it's kind of three-legged approach, is to enhance the amount of connected nodes being connected to the internet and with 4G, data has been very limited. And I think with 5G capabilities now, the amount of up to even billions of devices could be connected through the same ecosystem. And the second part of course, is to continue to enhance the mobile broadband, to increase the speeds and so on, but it is not as important for IoT because most of the data transmission done for IoT devices are done in a very kind of low data. 

Rickard Barrefelt (02:57): 

And then compared to maybe big video transmission that we could see in certain parts of the smart city. So the enhanced mobile broadband is an important, but maybe not as important as the massive machine type communication as you see between all these billions of devices. The third part and the third leg of the 5G versus 4G is really the ultra reliable machine time communication. And that means that you're trying to reduce the latency, so the delay in communication. And with 4G approximately around 100, 150 millisecond latency for 4G. And that's fine if you guys use your phone to have a video call or it's a phone call because you will not notice that delay. 

Rickard Barrefelt (03:36): 

While if you remotely try to steer a vehicle or a factory or an excavator, or even doing remote surgery, you will need to have almost zero latency. So the aim of 5G is to reduce this down to one millisecond, to be able then to use these kind of communications types from remote steering and remote surgery or self-driving vehicles that will have to real-time adapt to what they see in the field. And I think that part will also be critical for smart cities as we've got to monitor in real life and be able to act on things that is happening and sensing that. And not maybe by humans, but by AI and data analytics. 

Rickard Barrefelt (04:15): 

So these three legs is critical. Of course, enhancing the mobile broadband with speeds, mainly for maybe video transmission and so on, but then also very heavy broadband traffic. But critically important is the machine type, the mass machine type communication, which huge amount of billions of nodes being connected to the internet at the same time through the same ecosystem. And then the third part of this ultra reliable machine time communication is reducing the latency. So you could remotely steer and in real life in real time, act on the information that you get. So critical for smart cities, would say. 

Rickard Barrefelt (04:52): 

Maybe to add, I would say that it's important for the cities to not just look at the end devices like the street lights or like the surveillance cameras, but also look at the ecosystem, enabling this. And by 5G, we talk not just about the base station and the telecom tower, we talk about the cloud with the data centers, where all the information is being computed and calculate and analyzed and processed. And then into the new base station that's demanded from big wireless providers into the operators and their towers and on top of buildings and then further into the home or this smart buildings where they post the VLAN and the wifi. And VLAN is used to be able to communicate to all these devices. So the ecosystem behind 5G is critically important to be able to meet the requirements of the consumers on the device side. So I think it's important to take this into consideration when you're planning or supporting a smart city that you also already now plan for how you're going to build out the infrastructure, not just looking at the end devices. So critically important. 

Tyler Kern (06:05): 

You mentioned a lot of potential innovations and ways that things can go and applications that would rely upon 5G technology and that 5G really opens up a world of these new applications and that sort of thing. When you think about it, what are some of the primary applications that come to mind that are enabled by 5G that you think that we could see here in the near future? 

Rickard Barrefelt (06:28): 

Yes, internet of things is really the internet of everything, right? So everything could be connected and then we need to discuss if it needs to be connected and if it makes sense to do it. Some parts that we see in the smart cities is of course the environmental monitoring of pollutions and other detection parts, like gas leakage or water leakage or smoke detectors, but also the street lighting or city lighting. Those aspects will need to be connected to also make sure that they are lit when they should, but we also can control them from any consumption perspective. 

Rickard Barrefelt (07:03): 

Other parts could be parking lot, bike fleet management. We all have maybe tried out to do this Kickbikes that is connected, and there are places to roll around in the city. Waste bins being connected, to also understand how we can utilize the waste and maybe get rid of the waste from the cities. And of course, the building out of the stations and even these PSU drive kind of vehicles and transportation units. And it could also be things like vending machines to get your food or retail stores that are connected to that. Maybe doesn't need to have you go into the store, but you will get shipment from the store into your home and so on. So it's really multiple different applications. These were some of them that we think about. 

Tyler Kern (07:49): 

We talked about how we were going to discuss outdoor smart surveillance at the beginning of the podcast. And I want to dive into a little bit more of that now, because that is a big application that can be enabled by 5G. So what is smart surveillance and how can it become an integrated part of smart cities? What does that look? 

Rickard Barrefelt (08:10): 

Good question, Tyler. I think if you would consider your home alarm system as being a surveillance system, right? You have video monitoring, you have motion sensing, maybe even audio input, vibration sensors on your door or windows, or even have the smoke detectors to notice if there's a smoke or a fire starting. If those are monitored or just connected to, or beeping or letting you know that there's someone there, you need to have a person monitoring that. That's not really the smart part of this. So the smart surveillance is really where we see these devices and the data input is gathered and in real-time and analyzed, and so that they can proactively perform kind of a forensic analysis to prevent potential threats before they materialized into security incidents. So it's really that AI part and doing the data analysis real time and getting that back so we can prevent accidents from happening rather than just knowing that they happen. 

Tyler Kern (09:10): 

It's taking a proactive approach to security, as opposed to what I guess we typically think of for security now is reactive. Right? 

Rickard Barrefelt (09:19): 

Right, right. You will notice if something happens, right? And this data gathering, as you know, it's all about data. And to be able to have multiple nodes that creates the data. It could be the video part, it could be the motion sensing or terminal sensing, and as well as other parts of understanding if there is a potential threat. But to be enabled to analysis is without having human interference in a human monitoring, I think is really when it becomes this smart surveillance. And that could also then prevent us in real time to have these accidents. 

Tyler Kern (09:52): 

So Rickard, I think that when we talk about 5G and when we talk about outdoor smart surveillance, I think that when people hear the word surveillance, there can be a negative connotation. So I want to get a little bit more into what this does for people's lives and how it improves the lives for many people and all the good that it does. So can you share a little bit more about what outdoor smart surveillance enables and how it does make people's lives drastically better? 

Rickard Barrefelt (10:21): 

Right. It's a good question. I think that the positive effects are larger than the negative effects on this. So some examples I could give on the improvements of quality of life for its citizens could be when you're in a very dense city, there's usually hard to find a parking spot. So when you go shopping or make your errands, so by having a connected city and a smart city, you will be able to know already when sitting in a car where potential free spots of parking will be. That will, of course, make your time in the car less, and you can spend your time doing other parts of your errands or shopping. So I think that's one positive effect of kind of parking sensing and be able to route vehicles and traffic in a way that will ease or reduce the time spent in the cars. 

Rickard Barrefelt (11:10): 

Another example, of course, that we discussed a little bit is on the emergency response system, where for example, there is an accident, there's a fire somewhere, and to be able to, to in real life, most allocate the necessary resources as well as then be able to direct them the fastest way to the accident by maybe also rerouting other traffic so they can get quicker there. I think that's a very, very important thing that will save a lot of lives. So you've seen these real-time surveillance with the data gathered and then directly responding to that with the best routes and traffic, as well as how many resources also to be able, when there's a false alarm, to make sure that that is quickly communicated back to the response team and so forth. And I think 5G compared to 4G will really help both the ability of connecting all this nodes with and transmitting and receiving that data, but also the quality of data. 

Rickard Barrefelt (12:10): 

So not just the amount of different nodes, but also the quality of the data being sent. As we're talking about surveillance and security, it's important that there is a high quality on the data and you see better video transmission, better quality of the video or the audio. So very important aspects that 5G will enable. I think already today, we usually, in 4G, where you are connected maybe your laptops or your mobile phones or your hand sets, already last year in 2020, we did see for the first time the IoT devices surpassing the handsets. So last year, I think there was approximately 20 plus billion devices connected and 54% of that variety devices. So this transition has already happened, but within the next four or five years, we do expect up to 75 billion devices being connected. And without 5G, this will not be possible. 

Rickard Barrefelt (13:01): 

So I think it's a very critical aspect that we not just look at the devices, but also look at what the governments or city owners or other parts of doing it for the ecosystem, to not just place maybe surveillance cameras as well, but also to the ecosystem of remote radio units, small cells, the back end engineering with the cloud and make sure that you have the system set up to be able to have all this data transmitting. So it's not just about the end devices and IoT devices also, but the whole ecosystem of telecom and datacom. So from the data center through the telecom equipment, into the device and already planning for this as this deployment usually takes time. So I would give that encouragement to start looking into planning for this so you can be ready for those 75 billion devices by 2025. 

Tyler Kern (13:53): 

So what does it look like for these devices to be deployed around a city? Can you tell me what that might look like? Because some people might have one image in their head, but what you're describing might be something else. So kind of give me a picture of what this looks like. 

Rickard Barrefelt (14:06): 

I think, yeah, it depends on, of course, if you look at the metropolitan large mega city, there's different part of the city that could be surveilled, right? And you can have the streets themselves being surveilled from the vehicles or the people walking on the street and to of course, prevent traffic accidents, to prevent crimes happening, to see speeding, license plates reading. But it could also be other parts of, for example, more a hidden place. It could be a garage or a parking lot, or even in a basement of a place where you have maybe a gas leakage. So I think the surveillance of the city is of course divided into more open areas and parks and streets and so on, while it can also be surveilling that kind of hidden areas like basements, sideways, parking lots and so on, where maybe you don't have a lot of people walking around. So I think you should split those parts of the city up in that sense. 

Tyler Kern (15:05): 

That's really interesting. So what challenges does this pose for engineers when it comes to coordinating different devices, be it in a hardware sense, a software sense? Talk me through the challenges that are presented there and the way that you are coming up with solutions for these challenges. 

Rickard Barrefelt (15:23): 

Right. I would consider being kind of wireless path and then also more kind of hardware path. And the wireless part is of course, mainly through antennas, to be able to communicate with these different devices, IoT devices remotely, without having then cables connected to the device. So with our antenna competence and our broad portfolio of antennas, everything from cellar antenna to wifi antennas to kind of Bluetooth and GNSS antennas, we do provide big portfolio of antennas to be able to connect to these devices remotely and wirelessly. There is of course also need, due to safety and so on, to not be able to hack into every device that they could have a wired connection. And there we have a very big focus on harsh environments of the cable assemblies and the connectors. So for example, as the most likely then our outdoor in a city, they need to have a harsh environment and IP protection. 

Rickard Barrefelt (16:19): 

So TE do bring a lot of both component as well as that cable assembly competence and bringing those products into the engineers and to the companies making the devices. Inside the device, outside of the antenna itself, it's also a lot of components where needs a very big density. So a lot of functionality in a very small space. So here we have a big portfolio also to provide everything from an I/O connector of a USB, as well as an FPC connector, the different sensing things that is part of the device, as well as board to board and FP, and kind of internal wiring into these devices. We have a big portfolio, for example, wire to board where you connect the different PCBs as part of the device with this power and a signal. So I will consider that we could really support on the full ecosystem, as well as inside and outside of the device. And hopefully this could partner up with these design houses and OEMs and customers that we tried to survey with our TE initiative. 

Tyler Kern (17:23): 

You raised a good point there, and it was something that I hadn't really considered. But with it being outdoor smart surveillance, you mentioned the harsh conditions and that sort of thing. What kinds of considerations go into that? The fact that these are outdoor devices, right? But they're still sophisticated when it comes to the technology inside. But you have to build them understanding, that they're going to have to withstand extreme cold or extreme heat or moisture, all of those sorts things. That has to play into your thinking, right? 

Rickard Barrefelt (17:51): 

It has to. And I think it's important that we as TE, is taking the responsibility, as well as testing the full device together with the customers, and of course, with our components going into them. As we see environmental protection or harsh environment could be everything as you described or temperature as well as humidity and moisture. But also things like where you have salt spray from the cities of where it's pollution and other factors that dust sand and other things that could penetrate the device and hurt it. So what we do is usually develop these things together and partner up with the customers or ODMs and design houses to both be able to test the whole device and get it clarified for maybe a water test or other harsh environment test so the device itself, together with our component, is totally sealed or totally protected from any kind of harsh exposure. 

Tyler Kern (18:51): 

So are there any examples that you can share of deployments of smart outdoor surveillance and what that looks like in real life, in practice, in cities around the world? Do you have any examples that you can share, even if there are specifics that you're not allowed to maybe divulge on the podcast? But are there things that you can share just about what it looks like in the real world once this is deployed? 

Rickard Barrefelt (19:13): 

Right. I think it's one aspect and maybe current state is that you see a streetlight as just being a streetlight. And it's a pole that has a light and it usually lights up at a certain time. That's been kind of coded. Well in the future state, we do see a lot of combination of functionalities in one kind of pole. It could be a pole, but it could also be as part of building structure. But if you take the pole as a good multifunctional prospect, you can use that pole for both, of course, having a streetlight, traffic lights and other functions, and you could use it for having a monitor sensing that monitors the heat or the pollution or other parts of the environment. You could then also put on the surveillance camera or the security camera to have there as well as combine that with the 5G base station or the small cells. So in the same pole, you have this functionality of different devices. 

Rickard Barrefelt (20:08): 

And when deploying that pole, it usually is taken up the same space or the street or in the city as a traditional streetlight. Addition to this, you can also use functionality as charging your electrical car or other portions that you want to have in [inaudible 00:20:23]. So I think taking up the space in the city with combination of functionalities is going to be preferred from a deployment perspective as well as then from real estate right? I think it goes the same, if you don't look at a pole into a building or a building facade or a top of a building that the real estate expenses could be reduced. And by combining a lot of functionality into the same space or same pole or building. 

Tyler Kern (20:49): 

So Rickard, we'll wrap up with this question. But when you look and think ahead to the future and think about what 5G enables and all the smart city technology we've talked about today, what does the future look like for outdoor smart surveillance? And kind of paint a picture of what you think the world looks like in five to 10 years when this technology is more widely adopted and placed throughout the world. Tell me what you think that looks like and how our lives might look a little different. 

Rickard Barrefelt (21:20): 

Very good question to forecast the future. But I do see there's some potential challenges and maybe negative aspects as well as very many positive aspects. And of course we can all look at scifi movies and make our own mind on how the future could look like with all of this. But one aspect of course, is we've seen it already in the pandemic. When there's crisis and things like this, we do need support of both of course, serving the habitats of a city with healthcare and other parts, maybe remotely, because of not spreading that virus, for example. So of course, making sure that you could have things in the city that you remotely could steer, of course, having even deliveries of food or other medicines to your home without having to go out the door. I think it's an important aspect to serve that to the inhabitant. 

Rickard Barrefelt (22:12): 

So we know about drones sending medicine out to your doorstep, or having all these companies now that delivers food, as well as other portion down to your doorstep. I think it's one effect that we already are all experiencing as we speak. This could, of course, in the long run, have a health effect that we are moving less, which could of course have a negative impact on the human health, as well as on social aspects, right? We might not meet in real life, but we might meet more digitally, which is hard to predict how that will be. But that could be some challenges with that. At the same time, we have to look into the challenge of integrity, right? And we talk about big brother seeing you with all the surveillance where you will be exposed and you will be monitored all the time and discussion this challenges I think is important. 

Rickard Barrefelt (23:00): 

But there are also a lot of positive sides on this, to prevent crime for example, have very good emergency response system to aid people in accidents and other things, prevent traffic accidents and so on. I think this could save a huge amount of life with this capability of smart cities in the future. Has already shown effect, I would say so far with the applications that we see. Addition, I think one of the major challenges that we will have globally is the environmental and the climate effect. And bing able to monitor and steer energy consumption, water consumption, pollution, and so on by this monitoring unit. I think we have one hopeful way here to fight this global climate effect and make the cities a more greener place to live. I think that aspect, it will be one of the biggest impact hopefully will the enablement of smart cities and IoT. So that's kind of a little bit of a foresight I see. 

Tyler Kern (23:57): 

That's an amazing picture that you paint there, Rickard. I appreciate you sharing your insights and your expertise with us here on the podcast today, Rickard Barrefelt. joining us from TE Connectivity, he is the IoT sales champion, and a lot of other things, if you remember, his title was quite, quite extensive. But Rickard, thank you so much for joining me here on the podcast today and sharing a little bit more about outdoor smart surveillance and the world that this opens up. We appreciate getting your insights and expertise. 

Rickard Barrefelt (24:27): 

Thank you, and stay safe, Tyler and all. Ciao. 

Tyler Kern (24:31): 

Absolutely, absolutely. Rickard, thank you again so much for joining us here on the podcast and everyone, thank you for listening to this episode of Connected World, a podcast from the experts at TE Connectivity. We appreciate it very much. Of course, if you're not already subscribed to the podcast, then make sure you subscribe to stay up to date and you get insights like this regularly from the experts at TE, because we're constantly coming out with new episodes, recording and giving you thought leadership across a wide number of topics across the Connected World. So you're going to want to stay up to date with the latest on the podcast and the best way to do that is by going to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, hitting subscribe. That way you get the latest episodes right there on your device. And of course, we'll be coming soon with those new episodes. But until then, I've been your host today, Tyler Kern. Thanks so much for listening.