5G: Dream or legacy?

Introduction:
Faster, cheaper and reliable network has always been the ultimate dream of modern world. That’s where
5G or 5th generation mobile technology, still in it’s conceptual stage, comes into play. With 4G, it’s
predecessor, slowly gaining popularity around different parts of the world, votaries of Telecommunication
have already started their research on the next-gen network. As well as the prospect of being considerably
faster than existing technologies, 5G holds the promise of applications with high social and economic value,
leading to a ‘hyper-connected society’ in which mobile phones will play an ever more important role in
people’s lives.
Journey so far :
From analogue 1G network to present 4G network, each generation was the direct result of one single goal
which is overcoming the limitations of its predecessor. Usually a new generation comes to light after every
10 years until a demand is created for the next one. The journey of mobile networks began in 1945 when
0G(zero generation) mobile network was first introduced. At that time Mobile Telephone Services, were
not officially categorized as mobile phones, since they did not support the automatic change of channel
frequency during calls. It wasn’t until 1981 when cell phone era began with the introduction of 1G mobile
network. Then in 1992 2G replaced 1G and this is where cell phones received their first major upgrade as
this took them from analogue to digital dimension. Soon 3G followed 2G and now we have entered the era
of 4G network. A brief comparison can be seen in the following table –

What is 5G ?
From a general perspective anything better than 4G may be considered as 5G technology but is it that simple
? Currently 2 two preexisting views exist in the market in defining the next gen mobile network. Firstly the
hyper connected vision where 5G would create a blend of pre-existing technologies covering 2G, 3G, 4G,
Wi-fi and others to allow higher coverage and availability, and higher network density in terms of cells and
devices, with the key differentiator being greater connectivity as an enabler for Machine-to-Machine
(M2M) services and the Internet of Things (IoT). Now M2M is a proposed concept that refers to the
communication of wired and wireless systems, it is an integral part of IoT. IoT(Internet of Things) is the
‘next big thing’ , imagine a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique
identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-
to-computer interaction.

The second view is the more traditional ‘generation-defining’ view, with specific targets for data rates and
latency being identified, such radio access technology . This in turn makes for a clear demarcation between
a technology that meets the criteria for 5G, and another which does not. A Radio Access Technology (RAT)
is the underlying physical connection method of radio based communication networks like Bluetooth,Wi-
Fi,3G, 4G or LTE.
As result of such views a benchmark is developing for the requirements and criteria of being a 5th generation
network. For now 5G technology is imagined to have the following features –

 1-10Gbps connections to end points in the field (i.e. not theoretical maximum)
 1 millisecond end-to-end round trip delay (latency)
 1000x bandwidth per unit area
 10-100x number of connected devices
 99.999% availability
 100% coverage
 90% reduction in network energy usage

Potential uses of 5G:

Since 5G will surpass all its predecessor and create a bridge towards the future, questions arises to its
application. The following figure illustrates the latency and bandwidth/data rate requirements of the various
use cases which have been discussed in the context of 5G to date.
Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality/Immersive or Tactile Internet
These technologies have a number of potential use cases in both entertainment (e.g. gaming) and also more
practical scenarios such as manufacturing or medicine, and could extend to many wearable technologies.
For example, an operation could be performed by a robot that is remotely controlled by a surgeon on the
other side of the world.
Autonomous driving/Connected cars
Enabling vehicles to communicate with the outside world could result in considerably more efficient and
safer use of existing road infrastructure. If all of the vehicles on a road were connected to a network
incorporating a traffic management system, they could potentially travel at much higher speeds and within
greater proximity of each other without risk of accident - with fully-autonomous cars further reducing the
potential for human error.
Wireless cloud-based office/Multi-person videoconferencing
High bandwidth data networks have the potential to make the concept of a wireless cloud office a reality,
with vast amounts of data storage capacity sufficient to make such systems ubiquitous. However, these
applications are already in existence and their requirements are being met by existing 4G networks. While
demand for cloud services will only increase, as now they will not require particularly low latencies and
therefore can continue to be provided by current technologies or those already in development
Research on 5G:
Since 2012, a number of initiatives have been established to define and develop 5G and there have also
been a considerable number of statements from interested parties such as governments and infrastructure
vendors. Having fallen behind Eastern Asia and North America in terms of mobile technological
advancement due to a relatively slow rollout and adoption of 4G networks, European governments are
particularly keen to get ahead of the curve in the 5G space and there have been a number of announcements
from Neelie Kroes, European Commission (EC) Vice President for Digital Agenda, on the subject going
back to Mobile World Congress 2013. The governments of Japan, South Korea and China have also been
particularly active in driving the 5G agenda.
Meanwhile, vendors such as Ericsson, Huawei, NSN and Samsung all began research and development
towards 5G in 2013, and this year mobile operators have also begun making announcements regarding their
own 5G laboratory trials. A summary of the key parties, milestones and targets is below.

 ITU-R launched “IMT for 2020 and beyond” setting the stage for “5G”
 EU project METIS starts work on defining 5G
 Japan, Korea and China working on 5G requirements
 Samsung, NSN, Huawei, Ericsson have all started developments toward 5G
Neely Kroes press conference in Barcelona launched 5G PPP (5G public private partnership)
 NTT Docomo announced “experimental trials” for 5G using higher frequency bands

Conclusion:

Given the natural life cycle of network development, we would have expected to see 5G arrive around 2021.
However, the mobile-loving South Korea government has invested $1.5bn in upgrades that should see a
trial 5G network rolled out in 2017. The rest of South Korea should be connected to 5G by 2020. Karl Bode,
a tech writer, suggests that 5G will not hit the United States until 2018 at the earliest, or perhaps not until
the 2020 Olympic Games. It is not likely to be a mainstream service until 2025. It might be a few years
away, but the implications of 5G are enough to get tech-savvy consumers excited.

So 5G is not a question of if but when……………..