5G, the next generation communications standard, will support the Internet of things, smart cars and other technology.
A new standard for mobile communications will appear no earlier than 2020, but the corresponding specifications are being developed in full swing, and it becomes clear that the 5G standard will be significantly different from 4G. We are talking about increasing the speed of information exchange for mobile phones and tablets and many other solutions, each of which has its own requirements.
Predictions from Ericsson
How will 5G technology work and why is it needed if ultrafast mobile Internet exists now?
According to Ericsson, the future looks like this.
Unmanned and networked cars will exchange information with each other. In the event of an accident, the car closest to the scene will report it to all the cars traveling after it. This will allow them to reduce speed in advance or, in the case of traffic jams, to calculate a new route.
Car sensors will more accurately measure weather conditions and send data through the 5G network so that the car calculates the best driving route.
In the field of public transport, the 5G network will allow real-time monitoring of the number of waiting passengers at stops. The bus driver will miss the stop without passengers, and the dispatcher will direct additional transport to the places of their congestion.
In the 5G era, all home electronics will be interconnected. If earlier, when moving from one room to another, you had to carry a portable device with you to continue, for example, listening to your favorite radio station, now the speakers in different rooms will communicate with each other and listening will continue from the interrupted place. In addition, it will be possible to monitor the energy consumption of each device or find out how much electricity is produced by solar panels.
The 5G network will change emergency services by providing reliable communications in emergency situations and the priority of police and emergency communications. And firefighters in helmets with cameras will broadcast the image to the command and receive assistance in complex rescue operations.
5G technology
Last year, it was possible to streamline most of them, but the selection of technologies to ensure their practical application continues.
Among them:
- ultra-high frequencies, the achievement of which previously seemed impossible, will provide much greater speed;
- developing systems, sending data in tiny pieces, will extend the work of IoT devices for many years;
- reduced delays for tasks that require an immediate response.
5G network: speed
The assessment of the increase in the speed of the 5G standard compared to the previous one is mixed. Ericsson has managed to achieve growth of 50 times - up to 5 Gb / s. Samsung reached 7.5 Gb / s with a steady 1.2 Gb / s signal in a high-speed car. The EU-China Partnership intends to increase the speed of 5G by 100 times. NTT DoCoMo, a Japanese mobile operator, is trying to reach 10 Gb / s with Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Samsung and Nokia. And scientists from the University of Surrey suggest a speed of 1 Tbps. Over the next 10 years, mobile networks are expected to grow another thousand times.
The increase in speed will require more advanced antennas and equipment, as well as an expanded spectrum of frequencies. In the USA, the process of distribution of this resource has already begun.
Internet of things
With lower connection costs, more devices have access to Wi-Fi. The concept of combining telephones, coffee and washing machines, headphones, lamps and everything else into a single network is called the Internet of things. By 2020, it is expected that there will be more than 26 billion such devices in the world. And the number of connections will be even greater.
The ability of things to โfeelโ using sensors and remotely execute commands will find application in urban planning, smart home technologies, heat and power supply control systems, security, health monitoring, public transport, and retail.
The Internet of things requires a low connection speed, but for a huge number of devices. Dedicated networks using a narrow frequency range are already operating , and 5G developers want to take part in this process.
Thus, telecommunication networks will have to support not only mobile users, but also โsmartโ things. A new standard is called upon to help manage such heterogeneous traffic.
Delays
Obviously, the next-generation 5G network will support unmanned vehicle technology and augmented reality applications. In this case, the information should come in real time. The transmission and reception time in 4G networks exceeds 10 ms, which is extremely long. The future standard may completely change the network architecture with the movement of data storage from data centers to end nodes, including smart devices.
For a moving car, for example, the location of the nearest transport is required. Existing networks with the flow of such data already for three cars are not able to cope. Large delays in data transfer require local data placement.
It is assumed that the responsiveness of next-generation networks will be maximum. The delay in data transmission will not exceed 1 ms, even at a terminal speed of 500 km / h. Such latency will be a major driver for the development of new technologies, such as urban traffic management and long-distance surgery.
Reach consensus
If the situation with the definition of the circle of potential technologies improved in 2015, then the technologies themselves are still being developed. It is required to decide which 5G technologies are needed in the first place, and which will be implemented after. This is unlikely to happen in 2016.
Despite the lack of a standard and confidence in the priority of technologies, manufacturers are trying to lead the development and implementation of 5G technologies in order to take a favorable position in the future.
Nokia in April 2015 announced the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent for $ 16.6 billion, while U.S. telecommunications company Verizon Wireless announced that the first 5G network in the United States will appear in 2016.
First swallows
Prototypes of 5G networks have already appeared. The first 5G network was launched in South Korea. SK Telecom introduced a new technology at the opening of a research center that will be engaged in its development. And for the XXIII Winter Olympics in 2018 in South Korea, the company plans to build a 5G network across the country.
NTT DoCoMo also intends to launch a 5G network in Japan for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
5G networks vs USA
The 5G standard, like previous standards, is being developed by the 3GPP consortium, and it is approved by ITU, the International Telecommunication Union. Manufacturers do not want to stay away. In October 2015, some regional groups agreed to meet every six months to develop a common position on the 5G standard.
A similar agreement was reached in September 2015 between the European Union and China. Ericsson and TeliaSonera agreed on a strategic partnership to provide mobile operator customers in Tallinn and Stockholm with access to the 5G network in 2018.
And very little is left to wait for the 5G network to be launched in the Russian Federation. MTS and Ericsson signed an agreement on joint work on fifth-generation technologies, the result of which will be the first test 5G network in Russia at the World Cup in 2018, two years earlier than the 5G network in Japan. To do this, in 2016, the LTE-U project will be implemented on the use of LTE at a frequency of 5 GHz, used to connect Wi-Fi access points. Ericsson Lean Carrier technology will also be tested, which organizes traffic distribution and reduces inter-cell interference, increases transmission speed and coverage, and helps in network planning.
As you can see, the countries of the world agree on cooperation in this area. Everyone, with the exception of the United States, used to occupy a leading position in everything.
4,5G prepares for the future
Qualcomm has proposed 4.5G LTE Advanced Pro technology, the implementation of which is planned for the next four years. Thanks to this, the company will be able to support both a wider range of frequencies required for the 5G standard, as well as previously deployed LTE networks, which will reduce latencies and increase throughput.
Network Features:
- high throughput due to the combination of frequency spectra;
- support for 32 operators at the same time and increase bandwidth due to the combination of frequencies and the distribution of network traffic between operators;
- 10-fold reduction in delay compared to LTE Advanced when using existing towers and frequencies from 1 ms to 70 ฮผs;
- use of the resource of the incoming communication line for the needs of the outgoing;
- increasing the number of antennas at base stations to increase coverage and signal strength;
- energy saving of IoT devices by narrowing the range to 1.4 MHz and 180 kHz (up to 10 years on one battery);
- 1 Gbit / s for the exchange of information between cars, pedestrians and IoT devices;
- Scan your environment without turning on Wi-Fi or GPS on your mobile device.
Technological barriers
At the Fraunhofer Institute of Telecommunications in Berlin, experiments are conducted with frequencies of 40-100 GHz, Samsung uses a frequency of 28 GHz in its experiments, and Nokia uses more than 70 GHz.
The operation of the devices in the millimeter wave range has such a feature as extremely unsatisfactory signal propagation, the power of which decreases significantly with distance from the base station. In addition, signal interference can even be caused by the human body.
Solution - MIMO
The way out is the application of MIMO technology (Multiple Input Multiple Output), when several signals are sent and received simultaneously. Now it is used in LTE and WLAN. For high frequencies, Massive MIMO is used, a technology for optimizing reception when dozens of small antennas are placed in mobile devices and hundreds in the transmitter.
Antenna manufacturer SkyCross has created a 4x4 MIMO system that can be used in a 16x10 cm terminal. This is significantly larger than that of LTE antennas. For example, the dimensions of the LG G4 are 15x7.6 cm, the Samsung Galaxy S6 is 14x7 cm, and the Apple iPhone 6 Plus is 16x7.8 cm. The MIMO 4x4 system is not new - except for LTE-Advanced terminals, it is used in satellite television systems, strict requirements its size and power consumption were not presented. Thus, the creation of a small mobile device with 4 antennas will be a test for designers.
The development of portable terminals will also require a lot of effort. According to a representative of Texas Instrument, the creation of microchips capable of transmitting data at high frequencies will require the use of new technologies.
In 2015, the project for creating a 5G standard was officially named IMT-2020. It is a pity that the rest is still not visible end of the process.