Story ______ Hyper-Connected Intelligent Platform Technology
Share
Smart Evolution to a New Hyper-Connected Society
Gartner, a technology research company based in the United States, predicts that a hyper-connected society networking 25 billions of objects will arrive by 2020. This article explores the trends and prospect of future network research and development to realize recent issues such as artificial intelligence, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and hyper-connected IoT. It also analyzes the industrial paradigm shift delivered by ICT achievements from the national, social, and industrial perspectives. Furthermore, it studies the technological characteristics to realize a hyper-connected society for knowledge and informatization in the future and discusses hyper-connected intelligent platform technology to facilitate those characteristics.
A Chain Linking Smarter Future Network and Technology
In the future, the Internet will not remain as a mere vehicle to transmit information; it will identify what we want and use the results to develop into an intuitive network system that selectively provides necessary information. To this end, a new type of artificial intelligence-based Internet service will emerge. With the recent AI services, necessity for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the emergence of new industries to utilize explosive information, a number of global businesses and research institutions have begun to engage in research and development endeavors to facilitate new future networks. Most notably, R&D activities are being vigorously conducted at Bell Labs, the world’s top private R&D institution in the network field; NEC, a communications and electronics device company in Japan; ZTE, a Chinese network solution company; and 5GPP (5th Generation Public Private Partnership) in Europe.
Bell Labs believes that new types of business will emerge as a result of various technological transformations, such as the digitization of all objects; augmented intelligence-based connection of all people and objects and the resulting expansion of automation; and independent virtualization of physical space and infrastructure. The company suggests three core technological elements for future networks: new cloud convergence network, the Internet of Things, and augmented intelligence. Bell Labs further projects that the future network will allow any object in physical or virtual space to be asynchronously connected in a customized manner, by overcoming the restrictions of time and space, and with reliable augmented intelligence. This connection will produce a small amount of highly reliable information in the context of augmented intelligence. The results are the creation of a digital environment with sensory functions that can facilitate real-time remote control such as remote medical service and factory control, as well as education and entertainment services in virtual or augmented reality. In addition, the future communications platform will be able to provide situational information on all people and objects through intelligent local edge clouds and a messenger-based integrated platform comprising personal, media, and control communications.
Technology of Connection to Make a Better World
NEC has focused on developing sustainable tools to solve social issues and create a more prosperous future by using ICT assets evolved through the innovation of next-generation mobile networks. The company’s primary goal is to realize a sustainable world where economic growth is achieved through the development of efficient industrial infrastructure; where people can enjoy prosperous life; and they can demonstrate humanity and creativity. NEC defines that the future network by 2020 must play the role of a platform to create social values through open innovation to ensure safer cities, better public services, a higher standard of living, and a more efficient industrial ecosystem.
NEC’s vision for ‘Network 2020’ consists of two pillars: infrastructure of wired and wireless networks and data centers; and virtualized MANO (management and orchestration) to create and realize values. The existing networks were largely responsible for collecting and delivering information accurately and quickly. On the other hand, NEC proposes a future network structure to serve as a platform to address global issues or pending national and social issues.
Meanwhile, ZTE suggested the M-ICT 2.0 strategy, a growth engine for the future digital economy, represented by five trends to create future business models in response to the complete digital openness and sharing economy after 2020. The ‘M’ in the strategy’s title refers to man-to-man; man-to-machine; machine-to-machine; and mobile. This strategy is designed to create business opportunities and drive the digital economy, which is characterized by a sharing economy, an enormous use of P2P (Peer-to-Peer) networks, and reliance upon cloud computing platforms and services.
The 5G project launched in Europe in July 2015 introduced CogNet (Building an Intelligent System of Insights and Actions for 5G Network Management) and SELFNET (Self-organized Network Management in Virtualized and Software Defined Network).
The CogNet project aims to apply machine learning to cognitive network management, network security and integrity, virtual network platforms, and software networks. To this end, the project group is developing technologies to manage big data, networks, and network resources. Meanwhile, SELFNET utilizes SDN, NFV, and network intelligence as a means to provide improved self-organizing functions to 5G networks. The project consists of the management of virtualized network hierarchy and infrastructure hierarchy.
Digital Connectome, a Hyper-Connected Intelligent Platform
The Fourth Industrial Revolution stands on the basis of a hyper-connected intelligent information society where boundaries between industries disappear and innovative and creative new industries are created. To realize such an intelligent information society, it is necessary to introduce a new hyper-connected intelligent platform to connect objects in virtual reality as well as in physical space and intelligently process and securely connect the infinite data produced by those objects. The core technologies of a hyper-connected intelligent platform include the technology for noncognitive connection; technology to provide optimal information in real time; technology to blur the distinction between industries and create new industries; and technology to address pending social issues.
However, sufficient research on these major core technologies has not been conducted. Furthermore, as smartphones have become popular over the last decade, Google and other service providers that do not possess wired or wireless infrastructure have begun to provide big data by processing information consistently produced by users anytime and anywhere. More recently, service providers such as Airbnb and Uber that do not substantially possess tangible assets, let alone wired and wireless network infrastructure, emerged as the drivers of the new sharing economy and the autonomous economy.
The new networks to realize a hyper-connected intelligent information society in the future have to serve as a platform for the sharing economy and the autonomous economy to break down the current industrial boundaries. Going further, they will have to grow into an innovative hyper-connected intelligent platform that encompasses a platform to provide diverse application services such as hyper-realistic and hyper-intelligent services. ETRI defines a hyper-connected intelligent platform as social transformation enabled by creative and destructive innovation when people and objects closely communicate and interact with one another, just like the dense interconnection of the human brain and all neurons (connectome). To realize digital connectome, ETRI has set goals for direction-setting to address various issues.
For the hyper-connected intelligent information society of the future, it is important to set directions for technologies to identify and address adverse effects that may arise due to the development of technologies to connect billions of objects and create and connect infinite information. In the coming years, it will be increasingly important to secure technology for a hyper-connected intelligent platform as a future-oriented network to address adverse effects of informatization aimed at realizing a hyper-connected intelligent information society.
Authors: Dr. Dong Seung Kwon (Principal Researcher, Hyer-Connected Basic Technology Research Division); Dr. Seong Ku Hwang (Senior Vice President, Hyper-Connected Communication Research Laboratory)
