The most prominent advantages of 5G are low latency and high-speed communication. What opportunities will it bring to the embedded industry? In the process of 5G upgrade and construction in various fields, basic hardware equipment is the mainstay of hardware layer construction. What preparations and changes do hardware manufacturers need to make? This article will explain it in detail for you.

Know 5G

background introduction

The fifth generation of mobile communication technology (5th generation wireless systems) is the latest generation of cellular mobile communication technology. Looking back at the history of mobile communication development, from 1G to 4G is the quantitative change stage of communication technology, and from 4G to 5G is the transformation stage from digital communication technology to intelligent information technology. The 5G network is no longer limited to providing communication between people, but also extends the communication between people to the intelligent connection of all things, creating a fully connected digital and intelligent society.

main feature:

Ultra-high transmission rate, the download speed of 5G network is as high as 10 Gbit/s, which is 100 times faster than 4G speed;

Ultra-low latency, end-to-end latency in milliseconds in the 5G era. This will promote the development of special industries that require high security, reliability, and delay, such as Internet of Vehicles, industrial manufacturing, and telemedicine;

Ultra-large capacity, the ultra-high capacity of 5G will not only let us bid farewell to network congestion, but also open the era of Internet of Everything, involving fields including logistics, transportation, security, energy, medical care, construction, manufacturing, home furnishing, retail and agriculture.

Application scenario:

The characteristics of 5G determine its application, and the application trend will be mainly reflected in the following three aspects, Internet of Everything IoT, cloud-based life, and intelligent interactive AI. 5G is designed for the Internet of Everything so that all kinds of smart hardware can always be connected to the Internet. The Internet of Things will be the main driving force for the development of 5G in recent years. The Internet of Things has sensors, wireless networks, and radio frequency identification, but the control operation and data processing of the Internet of Things system The cornerstone of the operation is the embedded system. The ultimate goal of artificial intelligence is to replace human intelligence, and its intelligence is also reflected in embedded systems.

The three main application scenarios defined by the International Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) for 5G are:

eMBB (Enhanced Mobile Broadband). Specifically, eMBB is mainly to increase the rate. The future 5G standard requires that a single 5G base station can support at least 20Gbps downlink rate and 10Gbps uplink rate, mainly for 4K/8K ultra-high-definition video, VR/AR and other high-traffic applications;

URLLC (Low Latency High Reliability). URLLC requires that the latency of 5G must be lower than 1ms in order to cope with low-latency applications such as unmanned driving and smart factories;

mMTC (Massive Connections). The mMTC scenario is a massive connection, corresponding to applications with a large number of connections such as the Internet of Things. The currently hotly developed NB-IoT and LTE-M are prelude technologies for this scenario.

The “encounter” of 5G and embedded

From the previous introduction, we can see that 5G has three characteristics: high speed, low latency, and large capacity, which are very consistent with the characteristics of agile connection, real-time business, data optimization, application intelligence, security and privacy protection of edge computing. 5G is also putting forward new requirements for edge analysis and mobile edge computing (MEC), which is driving the computing model to shift from sending data to centralized computing resources for processing to transferring computing resources to new data generation points. Way. Reasons for this shift include stringent latency requirements for emerging applications, increasing data volumes, and a desire to optimize network resources.

This puts forward higher requirements for embedded systems based on edge computing, and also brings huge development opportunities. Embedded processor is the core component of embedded system, generally can be divided into embedded microprocessor MPU, embedded microcontroller MCU, embedded DSP processor and embedded system on chip SoC. According to the characteristics of the 5G network, 5G devices will face more complex physical protocols and algorithms, and have higher requirements for logic control and interface speed, which will surely stimulate the further development of the system supported by the SoC architecture, which includes a high-performance CPU subsystem and some hardware processing unit. All in all, under the background of the rapid development of 5G, embedded technology will also make great progress.

1. 5G, the embedded opportunity under the Internet of Everything

The high-speed and low-latency characteristics of 5G are even more powerful for the outward transmission of hardware devices at the perception layer. In layman’s terms, in industrial production, the status information of production equipment can be transmitted to the server in real time, and the real-time data of industrial automation control, equipment status monitoring, and environment-specific indicator monitoring can be transmitted to the monitoring terminal. In daily life, in the fields of smart wearable products, smart home, smart medical care, and smart home security, each terminal can be freely connected, so their working status will be more flexible, and data can be shared in real time, which is more meaningful to our life. Since all devices need to be equipped with networking functions regardless of their size and function, the products currently in use may need to be replaced in large quantities. This will be a demand event for embedded products.

2. 5G, Embedded Opportunities Under Artificial Intelligence

With the advancement of technology, some single and repetitive jobs will gradually be replaced by artificial intelligence, such as conductors. Now we see that major chip manufacturers have started to make efforts in artificial intelligence and edge computing. 5G, a fast lane that allows data to fly, can effectively promote the research and development of endpoint information collection equipment. It is foreseeable that in the 5G era, embedded AI products will also develop rapidly, and finally realize the systematic integration of 5G+AI+embedded.

M1808, enabling 5G and edge computing to empower the Industrial Internet of Things

Regarding the hot discussion on 5G, although more focus is on smartphones at present, in fact, in the era of large-scale applications of 5G, smartphones are only a small part of it, and more applications will focus on industrial Internet, Internet of Things, The Internet of Vehicles, etc., has quietly penetrated into people’s lives.

In the construction process of 5G upgrades in various fields, basic hardware equipment is the mainstay of hardware layer construction, and the upgrade of 5G at the network level will undoubtedly generate more demand for its performance. For embedded hardware vendors, in the 5G era, they also need to face the market and achieve functional breakthroughs. At the hardware level, it is necessary to create product solutions compatible with the external environment, improve the ability to create hardware for the external environment, optimize network interfaces and other aspects, and achieve network level upgrades. As a leader in the embedded field, ZLG Zhiyuan Electronics has accumulated more than 20 years of experience in the embedded field, and is constantly making new attempts and achieving new breakthroughs.

At the beginning of 2020, ZLG’s first artificial intelligence AI core board M1808 was officially released. This core board adopts a high-end dual-core architecture, integrates a neural network processor NPU, and has a built-in professional AI algorithm, providing users with a systematic solution of “hardware + software + algorithm”. M1808 also has rich peripheral interfaces, which is convenient for application expansion. Video supports MIPI/CIF/BT1120 input and MIPI/RGB display output; it has a series of sensor input and output interfaces such as PWM/I2C/SPI/UART; it has high-speed device interfaces such as USB3.0/USB2.0/PCIE, so ZLG M1808 The AI core board also supports Youfang’s N510M 5G module driver.

The M1808AI core board is paired with the 5G Internet access module Neoway N510M. The product has excellent radio frequency performance, supports 5G, 4G, and 3G, and has a wide frequency band coverage. It supports SA and NSA networking methods, and supports Sub-6GHz with comprehensive coverage. Integrating various network protocols and providing industry-standard interfaces, it satisfies ultra-high-speed data transmission applications in eMBB scenarios to the greatest extent. It is the best choice for the fields of power Internet of Things, security monitoring, smart energy, industrial control, and smart transportation.

5G module test results

Let’s take a look at the performance of the M1808AI core board with the 5G Internet access module Neoway N510M. The evaluation test of the 5G module is based on the M1808 platform, which forwards the 5G network to other devices through the M1808 Gigabit network card, which is equivalent to a “5G Gigabit router”. Devices with wired network cards can access external networks through the M1808.

1. Development environment

Development host environment: Ubuntu16.04 (64-bit), Ubuntu18.04 (64-bit) and m1808-sdk (cross tool chain);

Hardware list: M1808-EV-Board (with any supported core board), Neoway 5G module N510M and evaluation board;

Software resources: Kernel source package m1808-linux-kernel-4.4.194. zip (requires application to obtain).

2. Hardware connection

Install the 5G module N510M on the Neoway_N510M_EVK evaluation board. Through TYPE. Connect the C cable to the USB3.1 interface of the Neoway_N510M_EVK evaluation board and the USB HOST interface of the M1808-EV-Board (the OTG jumper needs to be shorted);

Connect the network card of M1808-EV-Board and PC;

Connect the power of Neoway＿N510M＿EVK evaluation board, press and hold the PWR ON/OFF button to start up, and the M1808 host can recognize N510M after turning on.

3. Other preparations

USB to serial driver;

Add RNDIS driver;

Add IPtables driver;

Compile the kernel;

Modify the file system;

Update M1808 firmware.

After all the preparatory work is completed, the network speed of the M1808 equipped with the 5G module can be tested. Connect the computer to the Gigabit Ethernet port of M1808-EV-Board with a network cable, disconnect other networks (such as WiFi) connected to the computer, configure the wired local connection to automatically obtain the address mode, and the computer can access the Internet. Open the browser on the computer and access the speed test network, click the “speed test” button to test, the following pictures are the test results under the 4G network conditions of China Unicom and China Telecom.

Unicom network test results

Telecommunications Network Test Results