Guide to 5G signal

In today's mobile world, users want faster internet speeds with a more reliable connection. The next generation of wireless networks, known as 5G (Notice the pattern!: 2G, 3G and 4G. Unlike Microsoft Xbox and Apple with their confusing product names!!.... iPad 1, not 2? No... Just iPad!? Xbox 360, Xbox One X?)

...promises to deliver that! In fact, much more! With 5G, users should be able to download a high-definition film in under a second (a task that could take 10 minutes on 4G LTE). And wireless engineers getting ready for the new service are already working on new technology that will utilise these great speeds, such as autonomous vehicles, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things. 

We could be using 5G as soon as 3 years from now!

If all goes well, telecommunications companies hope to debut the first commercial 5G networks in the early 2020s. Right now, though, 5G is still in the planning stages, and companies and industry groups, such as Nokia are working together to figure out exactly what it will be. But they all agree on one matter: As the number of mobile users and their demand for data rises, 5G must handle far more traffic at much higher speeds than the base stations that make up today’s cellular networks.

To achieve this, wireless engineers are designing a suite of brand-new technologies. Together, these technologies will deliver data with less than a millisecond of delay (compared to about 70 ms on today’s 4G networks) and bring peak download speeds of 20 gigabits per second (compared to 1 Gb/s on 4G) to users.

It's all about the millimetre waves...

The future path on what technologies will be best suited for 5G is a long way off. However, there are a few that are predicted to be under the main spot light. These include millimetre waves, small cells, massive MIMO, full duplex, and beamforming. 

To understand how 5G will differ from today’s 4G networks, it’s helpful to walk through these five technologies and consider what each will mean for wireless users.

For further information on this, you can visit IEEE Spectrum: