T3 India – April 2019

(singke) #1

5G guide


46 T3 Tomorrow’s Technology Today APRIL 2019 WWW.T3INDIA.COM

As you might have guessed from the
name, 5G – the fifth generation of mobile
technology – is the successor to 4G. It’s due
to start arriving (lightly) this year, and the
difference between the abilities of 4G and
5G is stark. On paper, 5G is faster than any
currently available Wi-Fi tech, and faster
even than any home broadband available
anywhere outside South Korea. 4G LTE,
the fastest standard currently available in
the India, is around 100 times slower than
5G when considering theoretical lab
maximums. That’s huge. It’s also not
entirely realistic; in real-world applications,
5G may introduce a 50 times increase in
speed, though we’d wager it’ll be less than
that when all is said and done.
Those numbers, even if they’re not
wholly likely to be what we end up getting,
are still impressive, and it’s important to see
them in context. They’re easily enough to
pull in entertainment content; the BBC
requires 2.75Mbps to stream high-definition
content from iPlayer, while Netflix asks for
around 25Mbps for streaming its Ultra HD
video. Even if new colour technology, frame
rates or the move to 8K bumps those
requirements up still further, there’s
cavernous headroom in the top-end
1,000Mbps bandwidth of the 5G spec to cope
with it. If we only see speeds of 200 or
300Mbps, that’s still comparable to the best
home broadband connections available
today.
5G reaches those speeds in a few ways.


First, it uses multiple antennas, allowing it to
take advantage of Massive MIMO, which
is similar to the tech used in modern Wi-Fi
routers. Put simply, MIMO involves opening
up multiple data streams from and to your
device simultaneously, for a theoretically
faster and more consistent connection.

BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS
5G uses frequencies in a similar range to the
current bands, and most 5G modems will
also include backwards compatibility and
fallback should a true 5G signal not be
available. But that’s not all: it also takes
advantage of a new region of the radio
spectrum. The 5G New Radio spec (AKA
5G NR, more on that later) does its magic by
utilising so-called millimetre waves in the
EHF band, running at somewhere between
30 and 300GHz. The shorter wavelength
(emitting pulses between 10mm and 1mm
apart, hence the name) means these
frequencies are capable of huge amounts of
bandwidth. Consider, if you will, the quality

of AM radio, which has a long
wavelength, with the much shorter-
waved FM – the difference in signal
quality and consistency is stark, because
FM’s higher frequency helps it carry a
much more detailed signal in the same
time window.
Data capacity isn’t the only
advantage. Improved latency – jumping
from an average of between 30-60ms on
4G LTE to as little as 3ms – means 5G
data can get from one place to another
much faster. 5G radios, in theory, should
also be much smaller. The same is true at
both ends of the communication; devices
will be able to shave off space
(particularly if they’re able to drop Wi-Fi
modules) and 5G transmitters will end
up much less intrusive than current
masts. Naturally, this also leads to better
power efficiency, giving smart devices
the battery life they so sorely need.
Again, this is mostly theoretical, and
it won’t all come at once. The 5G rollout
is likely to focus on delivering faster
wireless broadband first, before
introducing additional infrastructure to
improve latency and support massive
numbers of smart devices. The service
you get on day one will not be the same
service you get as the network matures


  • both in terms of upgrades that are
    likely to happen, and the speeds that will
    be available once the network becomes
    more congested with devices.


The 5Grollout may


focus on delivering


faster wireless


broadband first

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