The Ruckus Room recently caught up with Ruckus CTO Mehmet Yavuz and Ruckus VP Greg Beach on the sidelines of a very busy MWC 2019 to discuss 5G and the IoT.
As
Yavuz tells The Ruckus Room, 5G is an
extremely hot topic at the conference in Barcelona. While enhanced mobile
broadband is certainly something to look forward to, says Yavuz, the deployment
of 5G also brings its own set of very real challenges, particularly since 80%
of mobile data is consumed indoors.
“The traditional cellular deployment model has big macros outside with outdoor
antennas. This is a really good model for wide-area outdoor coverage. However, 5G
uses the spectrum band – at the higher end of the spectrum at 3.5 gigahertz or even
higher,” he explains.
“[This makes it] difficult for the signal to penetrate indoors. So, you really need an indoor solution [such as CBRS private LTE] to help solve these indoor data demands. The indoor solution also needs to be scalable, low-cost and easy to deploy.”
Another important aspect of 5G, says Yavuz, is its expected ability to support mission-critical applications.
“You hear about ultra-reliable low latency or millisecond latency and these are targeted at high-end applications,” he elaborates. “It may be a venue [with a need to support] AR/VR, or it may be a factory [supporting] automation. [These applications] all require edge compute capabilities because you don’t have the luxury of using traditional mobile core networks ”
Yavuz also touched on the IoT, noting that there are a plethora of available technologies on the market today.
“We bring all these [disparate] technologies together under one umbrella with our Ruckus IoT suite,” he says. “For the IT department or the operational department, this means there is only one network to manage. For us, what is really important is simplicity, performance and the complete solution.”
Overall, notes Yavuz, the picture for 2019 and beyond looks quite exciting.
“We have all these great technologies coming together with our partners. We’re bringing all these great applications …