Curious about 5G?

Are you curious about 5G but not sure what it's all about?  Here's a quick summary to bring you up to speed.

A quick refresher about 1G through 4G before we get started:
  1. 1G refers to the first generation of wireless cellular technologies that brought us our very first cell phones.
  2. 2G was a significant improvement from 1G in the way the radio frequency spectrum was used enabling many more users per frequency band.  Importantly for consumers, 2G enabled digitally encrypted conversations and SMS text messages!
  3. 3G was a giant leap forward from 2G.  3G enabled consumers to get online using their cell phones.
  4. 4G pushed the limits further with improved speeds and increased applications for consumers including IP telephony, high def mobile TV and video conferencing.
 So what does 5G promise?  5G promises to dramatically improve speed, latency and scale. It is expected to be 100X faster than 4G (you could download an HD movie in 1 second!). Its data volume capacity is expected to be 1000X that of 4G when fully deployed.  As a result, 5G is expected to be the foundation for turbocharging applications like Virtual Reality, Autonomous Driving and the Internet of Things.


So how does 5G do this?   Here are 5 key technologies enabling 5G:
  • Millimeter waves: mobile phones and other electronic devices use frequencies under 6GHz on the radio frequency spectrum.  As the number of devices online increase, these frequencies are getting crowded leading to issues like dropped calls.  To solve this researchers are experimenting with using extremely high frequency or millimeter waves (30 to 300 GHz).
  • Small cells: Small cells are low-powered mini base stations that have a range of 10 meters to a few kilometers. Fewer new macrocell sites are being built, with larger numbers of small cells recognized as an important method of increasing cellular network capacity, quality and resilience.
  • Massive MIMO: MIMO stands for multiple-input and multiple-output.  It is a method for multiplying the capacity of a radio link using multiple transmission and receiving antennas.  4G base stations have about 12 ports for all traffic.  5G / Massive MIMO base stations are expected to have 100 ports which could increase capacity by 22X or more.
  • Beamforming: Beamforming or spatial filtering is a signal processing technique used in sensor arrays for directional signal transmission or reception.  Instead of broadcasting signals in every direction, beamforming would allow a base station to send a specific signal to a user preventing interference.
  • Full Duplex: Today's base station antennas can only do one job at a time - either transmit or receive - a principle known as reciprocity.  Researchers have use silicon transistors to create high speed switches that enable networks to overcome reciprocity thereby increasing speeds of data communication.
 Here's a great video by IEEE Spectrum on this topic:



Are there any other technologies not covered in this post?  If so, please let me know in the comments column.


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