The possibilities of 5G together with Ultra High Definition

UHD Spain has held a new virtual meeting led by Jordi J. Giménez, Head of Technology of the Association 5G-MAG (Media Action Group), in which, for the first time, the possibilities of 5G and UHD today have been addressed.

Giménez explained that the main work topic of 5G-MAG is on 5G technologies and their application to different multimedia fields, both contribution, distribution and production of multimedia content. In his opinion, the objective is “to understand 5G, develop its standards, and facilitate the introduction of new applications and multimedia services.”

The expert stressed that 5G-MAG as such does not generate new standards, but rather interacts with standardization forums such as the 3GPP in order for them to meet the necessary technical requirements. “The collaborative framework offered by 5G-MAG enables organizations of any size to play their part in the development of 5G.”

La entidad cubre la concepción de casos de uso hasta su implementación y desarrollo. “La idea es juntar a las industrias multimedia y de las telecomunicaciones y facilitar la colaboración en el desarrollo de arquitecturas, estándares, guías técnicas de implementación y herramientas software que puedan facilitar la introducción de nuevas aplicaciones”, afirmó Giménez durante el encuentro. Asimismo, explicó la oportunidad de diseñar las nuevas redes y tecnologías “teniendo en cuenta factores como el coste, la calidad, la escalabilidad, la sostenibilidad, seguridad… tanto para la distribución de contenidos como su producción mediante una transición hacia workflows totalmente IP y basados en la web”.

El modus operandi en 5G-MAG

The expert also explained that the organization of work in 5G-MAG is carried out through a use case proposal, creation of requirements and evaluation of possibilities, in addition to profiling the available standards.

“Once the architecture and standards applicable to a specific application are understood, software validation, verification and development proceed to facilitate the conception of viable services and applications.”

Regarding work in the production of audiovisual content about 5G, highlighted the opportunity to improve connectivity for the transmission of content to the network, improving the benefits of the current “cellular bonding” as well as establishing local area networks based on 5G so that the network can be configured with the required levels of quality of service or, if there is no operator coverage to cover an event, a local network can be deployed. On the other hand, he also highlighted that members are analyzing the codecs and protocols regarding audio and video transmission that are supported in these architectures.

As requirements for content production networks, Giménez cited the management of quality of service for different signal flows, either so that audio sources are treated, for example, with a specific latency or that video sources are treated with a certain bandwidth.

Nomadic private networks

Jordi Joan Giménez also spoke about the opportunity of private networks for which there is an obstacle due to the “disparity in regulation adopted in different countries, even within the European Union.” Furthermore, the contemplated applications require opportunistic access to the spectrum for a short and determined duration, while the regulatory frameworks currently adopted are static and inflexible.

For the Head of Technology, the main developments carried out in terms of content distribution are the optimization of television and radio applications for both streaming and radio broadcasting through the different unicast, multicast and broadcast modes supported in 5G.

Projects for 2023

Looking ahead to 2023, which is now beginning, it should be noted that 5G-MAG has several projects underway. Among them, Giménez has highlighted those that are related to the television and radio over 5G mobile networks, video on demand y streaming apps with guaranteed quality of service, applications for 5G Broadcast, insertion of targeted advertising, integration with DVB-I, among others.

Regarding the solutions identified to transmit content in UHD, Giménez explained that a greater bandwidth in the uplink, would result in the possibility of transmitting better qualities. Regarding media streaming, he admitted that there are possibilities of associating profiles with the features of the network. That is, “if the network improves, change the encoder to a higher quality profile,” he specified.

On the other hand, focusing on distribution, he stated that “this architecture supports UHD profiles and can configure the network to treat different types of content differently.” This way, if a user has contracted a 4K service, the network sends it in the best possible way.

The expert described it as “very interesting” that there is a specific work item on 8K in the 3GPP, which is focused on the HEVC codec and the operating points, data flow requirements and traffic characteristics for different types of scenarios and requirements for decoding are being defined.