The fifth generation of communication technology (Hereinafter referred to as 5G) will undoubtedly change the way people live and work and 5G is seen as the evolution of wireless communication systems, with expected improvements such as greater bandwidth and improved network coverage.So what is 5G technology? What opportunities and challenges will it bring to drones?

Here is the content list in this article.

1. What is 5G technology?

2. The connection between 5G and drones systems.

3. The opportunities and challenges.

What is 5G technology?

The iterative process of mobile communication can be summarized as follows:

• 1G: using analog signal transmission , people can call each other in one country .

• 2G: using digital modulation technology to achieve data communication, enabling remote command cross farther .

• 3G: increased bandwidth ,which enables mobile devices surfing the Internet.

• 4GL: enables people to use video for entertainment and communication .

• The upcoming 5G technology can not only meet faster and better audio-visual entertainment experience, but also enable data bandwidth to meet industrial application requirements, providing highly stablity and extremely low latency.

Real-time instructions is possible to be come true, which will rewrite the history of development in the industrial field.

The connection between 5G and UAV

5G can help the drones to perform more precise real-time control by means of networking, such as real-time monitoring, real-time information gathering, real-time intervention and real-time fault handling. 5G can connect the drone to the network and realize the ubiquitous real-time operation of the drone through the cloud computing or artificial intelligence platform.

The opportunities and challenges

On one hand , let us see the opportunities that 5G brings to drones system .

1.  Enable drones to face security challenges.

Building a "digital sky" with the help of a ubiquitous carrier network will help to  solve problems such as drone identification, no-fly zones , electronic fences and "black flight" phenomena.

2.  Reduce the delay, which is conducive to the cooperation of the drone cluster.

According to the definition of the ITU(International Telecommunication Union), 5G have several features including peak rate of 20Gbps, user experience data rate of 100Mbps, mobility of 500km/h, and latency of 1ms. This will enable the drone to be applied to different scenarios, such as HD video surveillance applications for drones, and drone cluster collaboration. The later one needs to control the delay in about 1ms.

On another hand , 5G meets some challenges from UAV either.

1) The period is longer.

Due to the high frequency attenuation, the radiation range of a single 5G base station will be smaller, so there will be more base stations that need to be built in the same area. The real application of 5G will depend on the construction of huge infrastructure. It needs a long time .

2) UAV have higher requirements for 5G technology.

It is necessary to build a digital sky with 5G, so that controlling requirements for various types of drones can be possible. UAV can use the web of 5G to locate , share information and receive command in time .It is of vital importance for future drones systems.

Conclusion

5G can help drones to be more stable in new scenarios. In the future, with the help of 5G, the drone will have a good performance in logistics, agriculture, inspection, security and other aspects.