The shape of the future 5G

By 2020, experts predict the emergence of a new generation of wireless technologies. And although most players still have little idea what kind of technology it will be, it can still be said that 5G will surely be characterized by sharing of bands, combining carrier frequencies and using a large number of cheap and fast devices in the network infrastructure. This is stated in one noteworthy foreign publication , the translation of which we bring to your attention.

We have already written about the technology that may be among the applicants for the role of the future 5G ( part 1 , part 2 ). However, to this day in the industry there is no clarity on this issue. However, the psychological milestone - the year 2020 - is not far off. It is possible that in the remaining five years the new technology will not appear. Who knows, maybe even longer. But attempts to create it just will not stop.

However, before being engaged in the development and commercialization of the future 5G, you will have to find the answer to one of the most difficult questions: how to accommodate a much larger amount of data being sent to a finite band of the spectrum? Or, more precisely, how to standardize this process?
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Despite the almost complete uncertainty of the characteristics of 5G, in the history of the development of LTE there are several points that can tell us what to expect in the future. Since the advent of the very first cellular technology, infrastructure and subscriber devices have been developing unevenly. Infrastructure often played a leading role and was slightly ahead of the mobile phones themselves, and their manufacturers competed in who would bring to the market models capable of making the most of the opportunities offered by the infrastructure. Without a sufficiently developed cellular network, new models of smartphones would be simply useless. However, in 2007, Apple made a leap in this sense and released the first generation iPhone. As for the rest, apart from such surprises, the evolution of mobile devices, especially smartphones, followed the development of infrastructure.

Of course, in the future we cannot exclude the possibility of the emergence of such unexpected devices for the industry as the first iPhone was. But in the next five years, the development of mobile devices in general will depend on the bandwidth of the infrastructure. The ecosystem does not alter all at once, its various components “move” at a different pace. If the network is underdeveloped, the benefits of smartphones will be very limited. Therefore, it is perfectly normal that the infrastructure evolves ahead of time.

The need to combine carrier frequencies

The possibility of combining carrier frequencies appeared in LTE-Advanced (4G Plus). This means that mobile devices can simultaneously use multiple frequencies to increase overall throughput. Operators around the world have begun to introduce this technology in order to satisfy market insatiability in data transfer volumes.

But what will happen next is still difficult to imagine. One thing is clear - smartphones will become more powerful, and mobile traffic will grow, so the infrastructure capacity will be used more and more intensively.
Since banding requires band sharing, operators have begun to expand the bands used. For example, in Australia, the two largest operators announced the introduction of 4G base stations operating at 700 MHz. An interesting point is that there are very few mobile devices on the Australian market that can operate in this range. First of all, it is the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, as well as the Samsung Galaxy S5. And with the release of these two iPhones, the number of LTE bands in Australia has reached 20. You can also note the expansion of coverage in the lower part of the 850 MHz band.

In light of this trend can be expected within 1-2 years and the emergence of mobile devices capable of operating in a wider range of frequencies. Of course, this is only a guess. Indeed, due to the highest competition in the market of mobile devices, manufacturers are trying until the last moment to keep information about new products secret. But still, with a certain degree of certainty, it can be said that in the next five years there should be devices capable of transmitting much more information per unit of time than modern smartphones. Of course, the main reason for this will be the growth of video traffic due to the increase in the resolution of the commercials and the expansion of the mobile Internet.

2020

The growth of traffic, according to experts , by 2020 will lead to the exhaustion of opportunities within the existing frequency bands. And in order to offer a solution by that time, mobile device manufacturers, together with operators, need to start working on a common vision for the cellular communications of the future. Most likely, other standards, other designs of base stations, other mobile devices, a different network topology will be used.

The ITU, the International Telecommunications Union, an organization coordinating the standardization process in the mobile communications industry, adheres to a similar point of view for 2020. But despite the general absence of at least some idea of ​​the features of the future 5G, the main players must finally come to a general agreement on a number of issues.

According to the proposal of the organization 4G America, part of the ITU, 5G technology should provide greater opportunities for providing machine-to-machine (communication) sessions, as the development of the concept of the Internet of things. As stated in the document, “ people have ceased to be the main consumers of mobile services in the United States; their place was taken by cars, for example, smart meters of water and electricity consumption, digital signs, transport information systems. With the increasing use of network-connected devices for gaming and chatting, the need to expand the capabilities of devices for creating local home networks will also grow. The growth of the number of devices that will need to transmit monitoring information, data on the state of the dwelling, transport movement, etc. to the network will continue. It is logical to assume that the number of machines participating in the network will exceed the number of people . ”

To meet the growing needs of the market, 4G America proposes to design 5G with a view to ensuring reliable communications with low latency time on the assumption of a large number of devices, as well as taking into account wide data transmission capacity.

The document says that, due to the high information capacity of 5G, it is likely that “ more flexible methods of collecting and processing information necessary for managing network resources within the framework of the policy adopted by the operator will become available ”.

Also in 4G America it is assumed that 5G will allow you to keep in touch, even while moving at high speed, up to 350 km / h. Moreover, despite the potential occurrence of the Doppler effect. In addition, the document says that “the concept of a cell will not be so rigidly defined as to provide stable highly mobile communications and“ follow ”the movement of the user, unlike previous cellular communications technologies .”

We also agree with 4G America on the traffic growth forecast: “ tasks such as 3D games, augmented reality and the concept of super fast internet (tactile internet) will require a 100-fold increase in the capacity of future networks compared to modern ones, and a reduction in latency of 5 “10 times ...” immersive multimedia services will require the use of technologies such as 3D audio and 3D video, as well as ultra-high-resolution formats and codecs . ”



Finally, the document predicts that it will be impossible to modernize the practice of allocating individual spectrum bands for each operator, since the frequency resources will be exhausted. Against this background, the role of Wi-Fi will grow. The document also says that, from the point of view of the global cellular ecosystem, it is necessary to allocate about 50 frequency bands. However, this is not possible, therefore, operators will have to reach an agreement on a single system for harmonizing frequency bands.

Conclusion

According to ITU, despite the growing sales of mobile devices, there are still 4 billion people in the world not connected to the Internet. The vast majority of them live in developing countries and belong to a generation that will rather use a smartphone to access the network than a PC. So, it is too early for both manufacturers and operators to talk about the lack of growth prospects. And the development of this gigantic market will also spur the emergence of new mobile devices, with greater bandwidth, able to use a much wider range of frequencies compared to modern gadgets.

Summing up, we can say that existing 2G and 3G networks will have to be significantly upgraded, focusing, among other things, on the use of frequencies below 1 GHz. This will give huge advantages in terms of coverage in sparsely populated areas. And in order to gain access to additional spectrum bands, it will inevitably be necessary to introduce sharing between different services.