The five- to 10-year agreement includes the installation of state-of-the-art TELUS 5G infrastructure on uOttawa’s campuses. In addition, the telecom company will be equipping two 5G-research laboratories on the campus. Operational by the end of the year, these labs will allow researchers and students to transmit and receive vast amounts of data, at speeds twenty to fifty times faster than current 4G-LTE wireless networks, with negligible delays.
“For the last five to 10 years, people have been clamouring for 5G and predicting how 5G would revolutionize the world and revolutionize work, research and productivity,” says Guy Levesque, uOttawa’s associate vice-president, innovation, partnerships and entrepreneurship. “The timing for our university campus to become 5G-ready is perfect, and it’s right now. It is the tool to allow us to use data to change the way the world around us works.”
A quantum leap for research
The agreement earned the immediate praise of several uOttawa researchers working in fields where connecting to a 5G network will advance their work. Accessing the TELUS 5G network will provide “a tool, or platform for researchers for whom research depends on the ability to gather, process and implement solutions around data,” Levesque says. The network will provide researchers with good quality data, timely access and the ability to use that data to make good decisions, he added.
Those changes will occur because 5G will propel research advances in fields such as cybersecurity, engineering, virtual reality and telemedicine. More than forty uOttawa professors are already working in 5G-related research. “5G is a key enabling technology for the internet of things,” says Professor Shervin Shirmohammadi, a fellow with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and director of uOttawa’s Discover lab. The internet of things refers to objects or collections of objects embedded with sensors, software and the processing ability to communicate with other systems and devices over a network such as 5G. “I’m happy that the University is taking the initiative to be a leader in 5G and I’m certain we will all benefit from it,” says Shirmohammadi, who had already investigated the costly process of installing antennas and infrastructure just for his own lab. “We can now start designing and implementing and testing futuristic applications that can take advantage of this high speed and low latency.”
Professor Melike Erol-Kantarci, who holds the Canada Research Chair in AI-Enabled Next-Generation Wireless Networks, had been urging Levesque to enter such a partnership and so, finds this agreement “very promising.” Her own research into AI-enabled wireless networks, 5G and 6G, smart grids and electric vehicles will become even more pertinent once the 5G network is operational on campus. Erol-Kantarci also foresees new research opportunities alongside TELUS on healthcare and agriculture applications in particular.
In addition, the University of Ottawa Centre for Law and Technology and Society researchers studying the ethics and impact of 5G on decision-making, privacy and security will have real-world examples and case studies at their fingertips.
An exceptional learning tool for students
5G will increase accessibility and the quality of the learning experience for people off campus and in remote environments. In addition to improving transmission times and image quality during online classes and distance learning, the new network will provide students with an immersive, virtual and augmented reality learning environment, says Lévesque.
Once uOttawa becomes a “test bed” for 5G technology, students will also be able to participate in and learn from cutting-edge research projects in artificial intelligence, gaming, cloud computing, cybersecurity and multiple other fields that rely on big data. Inside the classroom, the 5G network will also allow professors to create immersive teaching environments, even including avatars of students and lecturers who interact and converse, uOttawa researchers predict. “We will need a couple of years of research and development, and uOttawa could be in the forefront if such a platform is developed,” says El Saddik, a university research chair in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Multimedia Communications Research Laboratory.
Over the coming months and years, the University will be seeking innovative faculty members to champion pilot projects involving creative ways to incorporate virtual reality into their curriculums and teaching methods, says Levesque. The University will be looking to students for input into the ways they want to take advantage of 5G capacity, he says, and 5G’s impact on teaching will evolve over the next three to five years. Access to the network will also be vital for students to develop the skills they will require to participate in the post-COVID digital economy, uOttawa believes. Rolling out 5G in Canada could add an additional $40 billion and 250,000 permanent new jobs to the Canadian economy by 2026, according to a 2018 report the consulting firm Accenture Strategy, produced for the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association.
That means students in all fields of study will gain from exposure and proficiency in learning and developing applications on the 5G network. Those skills will be particularly critical for students in engineering, says an internal uOttawa report on the possibilities 5G could deliver. “This skill development will be essential to supporting the growth of IoT (internet of things) and big data applications which are likely to have a massive impact as sensor[s] become widely integrated and … we can work with data in real-time in machines, plants, construction sites, environmental monitoring, and much more,” says the report, entitled A 5G Campus: Opportunities, Possibilities and Transformative Impact.
Smart campus
TELUS is to begin installing antennas and accompanying infrastructure for the new network on rooftops, light posts and inside and outside buildings this spring. The Advanced Medical Research Centre on the Alta Vista campus will be a 5G facility by the time it is completed in late 2025. Smart buildings, smart classrooms, and even an autonomous shuttle to ferry students, staff and faculty around main campus are among the “transformative” outcomes Levesque envisions once the 5G network is active.
Professor Erol-Kantarci envisions working with TELUS to apply AI algorithms to help the company optimize its operations on campus. Using anonymized data from the 5G network, she could determine, for example, the times of day and locations where students connect to the network most often. If, for example, people are downloading and streaming while in cafeterias over lunch hour, Erol-Kantarci could advise TELUS to add extra capacity then. “Those kinds of data-driven decisions can be made when we have the data, and we can work closely with TELUS,” she says.
Connecting to a 5G network will, for example, allow the University to reduce its environmental footprint by having smart sensors embedded in buildings to monitor energy, water consumption and air quality, reacting almost instantaneously to changes in occupancy and use. Smart sensors connected to the new network will also make improvements in physical and cyber security possible, Levesque says. For example, sensors embedded in recycling stations could signal when they are full, allowing facility managers to better plan when to empty them. In situations similar to the COVID-19 pandemic, when many campus buildings have been virtually unoccupied, sensors enabled by the 5G network could automatically reduce or shut down lighting and heating based on occupancy.
A competitive advantage
Being able to connect to 5G will also provide uOttawa with a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining top talent among faculty and students, say Levesque and some of his colleagues. “We will be one of the few universities who will have a 5G campus, so we will be able to experiment on futuristic ideas,” says Professor Abdulmotaleb El Saddik. El Saddik is excited about the prospect of the planned 5G laboratories. He’s already dreaming of how the enhanced wireless connectivity will benefit their projects.
Research testbeds, application development, smart classrooms and buildings, an enhanced student experience, improved accessibility and optimized campus operations and infrastructure are all reasons why a 5G-ready university campus makes sense for TELUS and for uOttawa, says Levesque.
Overall, bringing the 5G network to the campus will help the University meet its goals of becoming more agile, connected, impactful and sustainable by 2030, says Levesque.