Welcome, 5G. The 4G LTE Should Take a Bow, a New Sherrif is in Town

There have been the various generations of wireless network technology, each comes with the fastest technology at the time of its release. 1G brought us our first analog cell phone, then there was 2G, the digital phone that allowed us to do pretty awesome stuff like texting. The 3G brought us online. 4G upped the ante on its speed which many of us are enjoying at the moment.

But due to many users coming online and people wanting more speed, 4G seemed to have hit a limit as users want more speed and more data for their PCs, smartphones, etc.

Enter the new guy, 5G, capable of delivering 10x the speed and a thousand times more traffic than today's 4G networks. The idea you could download an entire HD episode of The Game of Thrones TV series under a second (something that may take minutes on 4G LTE network speed) may seem far-fetched but with 5G we could do that.

Due to the constant innovation going on, many tech enthusiasts may be wondering what next G we may be considering, but the 5G wants to be the network that may end such speculation. This may only allow for small changes/ update reminiscent of what Microsoft did on Windows 10 (they plan to update it forever, let us see how that pans out).



^{Source: Pixabay, 5G Network}

What is 5G?

In simple terms, 5G is the fifth generation of cellular networking. It is developed around the idea of the internet of things (IoT). The internet of things in is the concept of connecting virtually any device with on and off switch to the internet. These include the washing machines, wearables devices, virtual reality gadgets, self-driving cars, etc. That means that mobile data network would need to have the capability and be robust enough to handle all the interconnected devices traffic as it is estimated by 2020s about 26 billion connected devices (some even estimate this number to be much higher, over 100 billion). The present 4G LTE network lacks the robustness to do that.
Some of these devices need very fast overall speed ( in many multiples of gigabytes per second) but they need low latency as well. Latency is simply the time it takes to retrieve a data stored. That may be crucial in one of the IoT operation. For instance, a self-driving car should be able to pull up data(in less than half a second) it needs to make a turn or it ends up in a ditch or in a crowd of tourists watching the skyline. You do not want that to happen, do you?

5G latency is as low as one millisecond (1/1000second or 0.001 seconds). This would remove every lag known to us while doing video chats. The touted 5G maximum speed of 20Gigabits/sec (20Gbps) or 2.5 gigabytes/sec (GB/s) is simply mindblowing.
Theoretically, a network running at this speed should be able to transfer a 2.5 gigabyte(GB) of data in a mere second!

This speed trumps the fastest 4G LTE today. Though the average user may see speeds of about 100 megabits per second (100 Mbps). This is still faster than 4G LTE speeds.

The 5G was able to pull off this spectacle through the use of a technology that is lacking on other generations of network known as beamforming. The 5G has the capability of sending signals to areas where there is more traffic. This is more efficient than the current omnidirectional broadcast of cellular network antennas.

^{Source: 4G networks showing less efficient omnidirectional signal vs 5G more efficient beamforming signals}


This beamforming technique of 5G is combined with MIMO, an acronym for Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output wireless communication which is referred to the technique of sending and receiving the muiltiple data signal on same radio channel via multipath propagation. This is a cost-efficient means of communication.



^{Source,NTT Review: Massive MIMO technology}

This means we could have more things connected to internet with the projected devices being up to a million per sqaure km. This improves services in heavily congested areas like concerts, parades, stadium, etc.

5G is not available at the moment vbut the hardware are set up and is currently projected to hit the market in 2019 and goes maintream and popular around 2025. Infrastrcutures are currently built inclusing signal boosters to help boost the shorter wavelenght signals of the 5G.

Though 5G are currenly being tested in small scale in some parts of the United States; Verizon being one of the vendors running these tests.

The experiments appear to pick up where they left off: Verizon earlier this year was granted permission to conduct these types of tests in Euless, Texas, and South Plainfield, New Jersey, using 28 GHz prototype equipment from these five same vendors. ^Source

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I just got a 4G LTE phone and it is now about to be obsolete <3

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Ref: 1,2,3,4.