Network 5G: overview, description and speed. Next Generation 5G Network

5G, the next generation communication standard, will support the Internet of things, smart cars and other equipment.

A new standard of mobile communication will not appear until 2020, but the relevant specifications are being developed at full speed, and it becomes clear that the 5G standard will be significantly different from 4G. This is an increase in the speed of information exchange for mobile phones and tablets and many other solutions, each with its own requirements.

Predictions from Ericsson

How 5G technology will work and why it is needed, if super-fast mobile Internet exists already now?

According to Ericsson, the future looks like this.

Unmanned vehicles connected to the network will exchange information among themselves. In the event of an accident, the car closest to the scene of the incident will report all the cars to it following it. This will allow them to reduce the speed in advance or, in case of a traffic jam, to calculate a new route.

The sensors of the car will more accurately measure the weather conditions and send data through the 5G network so that the car calculates the best 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 pass the stop without passengers, and the dispatcher will send additional transport to the places of their congestion.

In the era of 5G 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 the audition will continue from the interrupted place. In addition, you can monitor the energy consumption of each device or find out how much electricity is produced by solar panels.

The 5G network will change the emergency services, ensuring reliable communication in emergency situations and the priority of messages from the police and emergency services. And firefighters in helmets with cameras will broadcast the image to the command and receive assistance in complex rescue operations.

5G-technology

Last year, they managed to regulate most of them, but the selection of technologies that ensure their practical application continues.

Among them:

• Ultra-high frequencies, the attainment of which previously seemed impossible, will provide much greater speed;
• Developing systems, sending data in tiny pieces, will prolong the operation of Internet devices of things for many years;
• Reducing delays for tasks that require immediate response.

5G network: speed

The evaluation of the increase in the speed of the standard 5G in comparison with the previous one is ambiguous. The company Ericsson managed to achieve growth of 50 times - up to 5 Gb / s. Samsung came out at 7.5 Gb / s with a steady signal of 1.2 Gbit / s in a car moving at high speed. The partnership "European Union - China" intends to increase the speed of 5G by 100 times. NTT DoCoMo, a Japanese mobile operator, together with Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Samsung and Nokia, is trying to achieve 10 Gb / s. And scientists from the University of Surrey assume a rate of 1 Tbit / s. It is expected that over the next 10 years the speed of mobile networks will grow a thousand times.

The increase in speed will require more advanced antennas and equipment, as well as an extended frequency spectrum. In the US, the distribution of this resource has already begun.

Internet of things

With the decrease in the cost of connection, more and more devices have access to Wi-Fi. The concept of combining phones, 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 "feel" through sensors and remotely execute commands will find application in urban planning, smart home technologies, heat and power supply control systems, safety, health monitoring, public transport, retailing.

The Internet of things requires a small speed of connection, but for a huge number of devices. Already there are dedicated networks using a narrow frequency range, and the developers of the 5G standard want to participate in this process.

Thus, telecommunications networks will be forced to support not only mobile users, but also "smart" things. Management of such heterogeneous traffic is called upon to come to the aid of a new standard.

Delays

It is obvious that the new generation 5G network will support unmanned transport technologies and applications of augmented reality. In this case, the information must arrive in real time. The reception-transmission time in 4G-networks exceeds 10 ms, which is very much. The future standard can completely change the network architecture with moving data storage from data centers to end nodes, including smart devices.

A moving car, for example, requires information about the location of the nearest transport. Existing networks with a stream of such data already for three cars can not cope. Large delays in data transfer require local data placement.

It is assumed that the responsiveness of next-generation networks will be maximized. The delay in data transmission will not exceed 1 ms, even at a terminal speed of 500 km / h. Such latency will be the main driving factor for the creation of new technologies, such as urban traffic management in urban traffic and remote surgical operations.

Reach consensus

If the situation with the definition of the range of potential technologies has improved in 2015, the technologies themselves are still being developed. It is required to determine which 5G technologies are needed first and which ones will be implemented afterwards. It is unlikely that this will happen in 2016.

Despite the lack of a standard and confidence in the priority of technology, manufacturing companies are trying to lead the development and implementation of 5G technologies in order to occupy a profitable position in the future.

In April 2015, Nokia announced the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent for $ 16.6 billion, and US telecommunications company Verizon Wireless said that the first 5G network in the US will appear in 2016.

First Swallows

The prototypes of 5G networks have already appeared. The first 5G network was launched in South Korea. SK Telecom presented a new technology at the opening of the research center, which will develop it. And by the XXIII Winter Olympic Games in 2018 in South Korea, the company plans to build a 5G network throughout the country.

NTT DoCoMo also intends to launch the 5G network in Japan for the summer Olympic Games in 2020 in Tokyo.

5G Networks vs USA

Standard 5G, like previous standards, is being developed by the 3GPP consortium, and it is approved by the ITU, the International Telecommunication Union. Do not want to stay away and producers. In October 2015, some regional groups agreed to meet every six months to develop a common position on the 5G standard.

Such an agreement was reached in September 2015 between the European Union and China. Ericsson and TeliaSonera have agreed on a strategic partnership to provide customers of the cellular operator in Tallinn and Stockholm with access to the 5G network in 2018.

And very little left to wait, when the 5G-network will be launched in Russia. MTS and Ericsson have entered into an agreement to work together on fifth generation technologies, which will result in 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 will be implemented LTE-U project on the use of LTE at a frequency of 5 GHz, used for connecting Wi-Fi access points. Also, Ericsson Lean Carrier technology will be tested, which organizes traffic distribution and reduces inter-cell interference, increases transmission speed and coverage, and helps in network planning.

Apparently, the countries of the world agree on cooperation in this field. All, except for the United States, are accustomed to occupy a leading position in everything.

4.5G prepares for the future

Qualcomm Company offered the technology 4.5G LTE Advanced Pro, the implementation of which is planned for the next four years. Thanks to this, the company will be able to support both the wider spectrum of frequencies required for the 5G standard and the previously deployed LTE networks, which will reduce delays and increase bandwidth.

Network Features:

• High throughput through the combination of frequency spectra;
• Support of 32 operators at the same time and increase in capacity due to the combination of frequencies and distribution of network traffic between operators;
• 10-fold delay reduction in comparison with LTE Advanced when using existing towers and frequencies from 1 ms to 70 μs;
• Use of the resource of the incoming communication line for outgoing calls;
• An increase in the number of antennas at base stations to increase coverage and signal strength;
• Increase of energy saving of IoT-devices by narrowing the range to 1.4 MHz and 180 kHz (up to 10 years on one battery);
• 1 Gb / s for the exchange of information between cars, pedestrians and IoT-devices;
• Scan an 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 28 GHz in its experiments, and Nokia - over 70 GHz.

The operation of devices in the millimeter wave band has such a feature as the extremely unsatisfactory propagation of a signal whose power decreases significantly with distance from the base station. In addition, signal interference can be caused even by the human body.

Solution - MIMO

The solution is to use MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) technology when several signals are sent and received simultaneously. Now it is used in LTE and WLAN. For high frequencies Massive MIMO is used - the technology of reception optimization, when in mobile devices dozens of small antennas are placed and hundreds - in the transmitter.

The SkyCross antenna manufacturer has created the MIMO 4x4 system, which can be used in a 16x10 cm terminal. This is significantly more than the antennas for LTE. 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 16х7.8 cm. The MIMO 4x4 system is not new - except LTE-Advanced terminals, it is used in satellite TV systems, To its size and energy consumption was not shown. Thus, the creation of a small mobile device with 4 antennas will be a test for the designers.

The development of portable terminals will also require a lot of effort. According to the representative of Texas Instrument, that for the creation of microchips capable of transmitting data at high frequencies, the use of new technologies will be required.

In 2015, the project to create the 5G-standard was officially named IMT-2020. It is a pity that the rest of the process is still not visible.