In this episode of What That Means, Camille talks wireless communications with Vida Ilderem, VP at Intel Labs in charge of wireless communications research. Vida has 27 patents, including one on beam forming, and she’s the perfect person to get the definition and evolution of wireless communications from.

The convo covers:

• 3G, 4G, 5G and 5G+

• IOT

• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

• Computing at the edge

• Interoperability

• Reliability

• Liable low-latency com

• LTE

• Beam forming

...and more. Don’t miss it!

Here are some key take-aways:

• Wireless communication is the transmission of information over networks, without the use of wires. It’s about communication and the connectivity needed.

• 5G stands for the fifth generation of communication.

• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are examples of protocols for wireless communication.

• As machines come online, ultra-reliability and low-latency becomes even more important – especially in mission critical applications like surgery.

• The human needs and machine needs of wireless communication are different. Making wireless communication reliable means finding that balance of human and machine needs.

• The more things on your network, the greater your attack surface. The challenge of securing all of these things is an ongoing one that’s not as simple as we’d all like it to be. One reason is that we want our devices to talk to each other, regardless of what company they’re from. Making that inoperability possible while keeping everything secure is inherently difficult.

• Reliability is another challenge of wireless communications, because wireless, by nature, is not reliable.

• Introducing a new generation of wireless communication doesn’t mean you can stop supporting previous generations. Not all devices will rely on the latest generation and being able to fall back on another generation when a connection is lost improves reliability.

• Beam forming is a way of using antennas to transmit information directly to users by forming directional beams. The benefit is that it extends the distance, increases capacity, and increases the number of users.

Some interesting quotes from today’s episode:

“5G stands for fifth generation of communication. The first generation was analog -- you must have human communication. The second generation was about going digital on it -- there's voice communication. The third generation was when they introduced data -- more people loading images. The fourth generation was allowing people to do more streaming and added mobility. And fifth generation is about, not only getting higher data rates and throughputs, but also bringing the machine and instrumenting the devices -- so giving rise to Internet of Things. These all become possible because of wireless communication.”

“There can be licensed spectrums like cellular or unlicensed spectrums like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.”

“Then there is the ultra-reliable, low-latency communication for very mission critical applications. And that's where the concept of edge comes in, because you need to bring the compute closer to the data. From the cloud computing all the way to the edge computing. Because the machines or the applications which are coming online now, they need that ultra-reliable, low-latency requirement you have to meet.”

“We want to make sure we get the data when we need the data -- anywhere, any device. That's the human side of it.”

“As you’re increasing the number of things which are instrumented (i.e., they have an IP address and they're joining the network), you're increasing the attack surface. I mean, look at your home. How many sensors do we have now that talk to the Wi-Fi router in your home? And many of these are not necessarily secure today. It is a big task and a challenge that is still being addressed.”

“Wireless link by nature is not reliable. We can drop it because the charge works through the air. So, you can lose the link.”

“The other thing with wireless communication is, as you’re introducing a generation, you still are supporting previous generations.”

“There’s also a lot of re-use going on. Again, as I said, you're not throwing out the old to add the new. We still need the old -- you build up on that. So, it's more of an integration challenge.”