Building Wireless Inside Out

Wireless connectivity - we cannot see it, feel it, hear it, smell it, touch it, but when it is not available, we are not available and our productivity is immobilized.

Wireless connection to the Internet is among the top three most important factors for tenants who are searching for office space, along with cost and location. Until now there has been very little information available to tenants about the quality of internet connectivity in office spaces. Wired Certification provides that transparency and access to information to tenants. 

Connectivity Matters. Wired Certification is a commercial real estate rating system that empowers landlords to understand, improve, and promote their buildings' digital infrastructure.

It is of interest that wired certification is important because your in-building wireless needs to connected by a building backbone of fiber to the street and well beyond.

The "Gee" in 5G (and very soon of 6G) will be defined and demonstrated by progressive in-building wireless adopters creating our first Inside and Out weaving of new wireless ways. Below is a collection of relevant articles with clips and quotes to give you a sense of the change upon us. Read for a quick overview, but click on any link for the source and for  in-depth insight on each topic. This next chapter is meant to be read on several levels while providing the resources to take you to your next level of understanding.

You will see in all these articles a shift from carrier-owned obsolete wired backbones in buildings to new, in-building owned fiber backbones to the street; all necessary to feed the fourth utility, wireless, which is mandatory for today's space. 

This amazing change is occurring very fast. Building Owned In-Building Wireless, large entities (such as Amazon) using the unlicensed spectrum in the 900MHz band, and the further evolution of G5 & now G6 will bring an amazing amount of new people and new equipment into our traditional building automation space.

From Memoori Smart Building Research,

5G Will Become a Vital Part of Smart Building Property Infrastructure” 

4G has changed people’s lives, but 5G is set to change societies. Building on 4G, 5G provides richer services and further extends industry boundaries,” reads a new whitepaper. “Statistics show that more than 70% of services in 4G occur indoors, and industry predictions show that this percentage will surpass 80% as 5G spreads service diversity and extends business boundaries. Based on this, we can see that 5G indoor mobile networks will become an essential part of operators’ core competitiveness.

From Art King, Director, Enterprise Services & Technology, Corning, in his article “LTE Necssary in the Face of 5G” on the Realcomm website,

Recognize that wireless really is your fourth utility. 

You wouldn’t wait to replace a broken water pipe in your building, so why would you wait to replace an outdated communications system? Just like water, gas or electricity, wireless connectivity is now considered a necessity. If that conference call won’t connect or an important sales call drops, frustrations set in. Solutions available today – DAS, small cell and hybrid solutions – can answer today’s need and prepare you for 5G success.  Rest easy – the basics for 5G are there. Optical transport is the basis of the infrastructure needed to support the next wireless network – both outside and inside. For the last 2 decades, fiber has become increasingly prominent in the vertical telecom riser in many buildings, setting a solid foundation for a future-ready network.

From Steve McCaskill, writing on techradar.com,

What is Amazon Sidewalk? 

A number of wireless standards are used to connect IoT devices, each of which have their own advantages and disadvantages. Bluetooth offers high bandwidth but limited range, Wi-Fi promises low power consumption and high capacity but coverage isn’t universal, while 5G will include provisions for IoT – once network deployments are complete.  Sidewalk uses unlicensed spectrum in the 900MHz band (reserved for amateur radio transmissions) to deliver low bandwidth and long-distance connectivity. It has a range of between 500 metres to one mile, making it ideal for devices that require low-cost and low-power transfers of small amounts of data.

Again, from Memoori,

Standards, Tools & Frameworks are Essential to the Future of Smart Buildings  

While market acceptance and adoption of these emerging standards tools and certification programs is not guaranteed, if successful, the indicator should help raise awareness amongst building owners and occupants of the value behind building automation and electronic monitoring of technical building systems and should give confidence to occupants about the actual savings of those new enhanced functionalities… 

Once more from the Realcomm site, www.realcomm.com,

The 5G & In-Building Wireless Pavilion featured the top 25 vendors focused on bringing in-building wireless solutions to the Commercial and Corporate Real Estate market. This includes manufacturers, integrators, service providers, consultants and others. With 5G, CBRS and other in-building wireless technologies in a position to radically change building communication strategies, this Pavilion was the best place to start your in-building wireless journey.

CBRS is known as Citizen broadband radio service, It is a 150 MHz wide broadcast band in 3.5 GHz band starting from 3550 MHz to 3700 MHz. In 2017, the FCC completed a process to establish rules for commercial use of this band. Commercializing this band enables Service Providers/Wireless Operators to use it without acquiring frequency licenses. CBRS frequency spectrum shall help 4G/5G mobile networks deployment quicker and easier. CBRS band is also referred to as 3.5 GHz band.

From Byron BeMiller, Vertical Lead for Smart Buildings, Semtech, writing on AutomatedBuildings.com,

Industry Standard Contributes to the IoT Ecosystem 

LoRa Alliance actively pushes the LoRaWAN protocol, an open LPWAN network protocol designed for solution interoperability and connection to regional, national or global networks.  The LoRa Alliance is a community of over 500 member companies, all of which are active contributors to the development of solutions, products and services to the IoT industry.  Navigant Research predicts that the global market for IoT solutions in smart buildings will grow from $8.5B in 2020 to over $22B in only six years. As the industry continually pushes for more connectivity and smart city integration, the importance of scalable and interoperable IoT technology increases.

From an article, New SaaS Company Enables Real Esate Owners to Join the Smart City published on the Idun web site, 

We have this vision where one smart building is asking for resources from another smart building, and communicating with other actors in a smart city,” says Erik Wallin, CEO of Idun Real Estate Solutions and Co-creator of ProptechOS and RealEstateCore. “To make this a reality, we need more buildings to join. And this is where having a common language is key.”

I will be learning more at CoRE TEch's education programs. From their web site:

The program will feature domain experts from around the globe presenting case studies and speaking on the topics of building automation systems and controls, building system integration and the implications for organizational alignment, skills development and change management necessary to facilitate the intelligent integration of key business processes into the high performance building ecosystem. 

LOCATION BASED SERVICES – Maintenance, People-finding, Wayfinding and Beyond 

Location Based Services have increased substantially in importance. The idea is simple: our phones communicate our location, and that information allows for a number of new services to improve operational efficiency and safety, and to create unique occupant experiences. Managing a maintenance schedule and resources, getting people to their destination, connecting with people based on proximity, as well as head counts during emergencies are just a few of the potential applications. All this efficiency and experience must be balanced with consumer privacy. This important session will present the multitude of applications for this technology as well as the potential for unintended consequences.

WIFI & WIRELESS – Providing Robust Communications for Today’s Workplace 

While there is a great deal of anticipation surrounding new capabilities in 5G and CBRS, WiFi remains a wireless technology that is required to provide a comprehensive communications platform. Some would argue that WiFi is one of the most important amenities in today’s modern workplace. There have been many WiFi technological advancements over the last 12-18 months that could impact the level of wireless services delivered to building occupants. WiFi 6 (802.11ax)–a new wireless standard for indoor networks; a WPA3 Standard–added security for WiFi networks; the new 6 GHz WiFi spectrum coming in 2020; and the integration of WiFi with 5G to extend 5G connectivity into buildings will be some of the topics covered in this timely Tech Talk.

5G, CBRS: Ushering in the Next Generation of Mobility – A Market Overview 

Two of the most fundamental changes to mobility in years, 5G and CBRS, are becoming more accessible every day. While already in place in other parts the world, this new telecommunication infrastructure is poised to significantly impact daily life in the United States. Faster speeds and lower latency mean more interactivity with mobile devices, as well as a new generation of IoT devices—many of them associated with buildings. Corporate Real Estate and Facility executives will need to work more closely with their IT counterparts in order to fully understand the issues, challenges and opportunities. More flexibility on the run will continue to impact real estate operations and use of space. This Tech Talk will provide an overview of the technology and first generation use cases.

From smartcitiesworld.net, Babak Beheshti, Dean of the College of Engineering and Computing Sciences, New York Institute of Technology,

What 5G means for smart cities 

As you can see, CMTC services are very much aligned with the vision of digitally automating cities.  Machine communication - Specifically, 5G offers massive machine type communication (MMTC) and critical machine type communication (CMTC). MMTC is intended for a large number of IoT devices, effectively a large number of sensors and actuators sending a lot of data back and forth. Example applications include smart buildings, logistics and fleet management, as well as air and water quality monitoring. It is designed to be latency-tolerant, efficient for small data blocks to be transmitted or received, and to be sent on low bandwidth pipes.

From Lakshmi Priya Rajendram, writing on citymetric.com,

Smart Cities need to slow down,  

All over the world, governments, institutions and businesses are combining technologies for gathering data, enhancing communications and sharing information, with urban infrastructure, to create smart cities. One of the main goals of these efforts is to make city living more efficient and productive – in other words, to speed things up.  Yet for citizens, this growing addiction to speed can be confounding. Unlike businesses or services, citizens don’t always need to be fast to be productive. Several research initiatives show that cities have to be “liveable” to foster well-being and productivity. So, quality of life in smart cities should not be associated with speed and efficiency alone.

Once more from the Realcomm site, Sr. Writer Tina Danielsen,

Seven Technologies Destined to Change 

They say knowledge is power, but the sheer number of CRE technologies that arrive daily can create information paralysis. There are various options for every aspect of the built environment and business case, some bordering on science fiction. With the rapid influx of new products, today’s organization must maintain a culture of continuous change and improvement.  Determining which technologies offer the best way forward takes time and input from every stakeholder. So, what are the new trends and opportunities? Here’s a short list of some exciting new tech options...

A special report From the STL Partners web site,

The unique benefits of 5G could unlock $1.4tn of value 

in eight key industries in 2030. What steps should operators take to deliver these benefits? What business and organisational transformation must occur to unlock this opportunity?

From the LED Indside web site,

Our future? LiFi on Flights 

LiFi enables a superior onboard connectivity experience in terms of bandwidth, latency and stability. Another advantage of LiFi is that it doesn’t interfere with sensitive equipment and that the connection isn’t affected by the airplane’s movements. LiFi also results in less cabling, and together with an infrastructure upgrade to low-weight fiber solutions, will reduce the airplane's weight and fuel usage.

Change never ends. While most of us are pondering on the promise of 5G, the services it is to enable and how to address societal concerns over 5G, a Finnish university has set out the drivers for 6G. Fascinating read from this chapter of our never ending story, Smart City Building . The autonomous smart building is the secret formula for building a smart city.

From the SpeedNoLimits web site,

Welcome to the World of SPEED!  

Welcome to the fourth industrial revolution. A digital age of connectivity, digital services, a world in which material goods are losing their importance. Welcome to the era of prediction of events and autonomous vehicles. Welcome to a world where you earn from knowledge and certainty rather than guessing and estimating risks. Welcome to the world of SPEED – invites Aleksander Poniewierski, the author of “SPEED no limits in the digital era”.

From the University of Oulu web site,

Discover how 6G will change our lives Vision for 2030 

Our society is data-driven, enabled by near-instant, unlimited wireless connectivity.  6G Flagship Ecosystem A Network of True Experts. Expert network consists of researchers, ICT companies and companies, which exploit the opportunities of new wireless technologies.

This Video (also from the University of Oulu) provides a quick overview of how rapidly change will occur. From its YouTube descriptor,

Our future society is data-driven, enabled by near-instant and unlimited wireless connectivity. Developing products, services and vertical applications for the future digitised society requires a multidisciplinary approach and a re-imagining of how we create, deliver and consume data and services. 

While researching this latest chapter I have learned lots about weaving new wireless ways. We hope the above-linked resources help increase your understanding of our future dependence on wireless connectivity.