5G And Its Features!

I’m appreciative from the core of my heart to my teacher Mr. Syed Hassan Ahmed who’s doing his PhD on 5G and he’s an assistant professor in a reputed engineering university, to assist me with the information pertaining to 5G.

5G is the term used to describe the coming generation of mobile networks beyond the 4G LTE mobile systems of today. The ITU IMT-2020 (International Telecommunication Union) standard provides for speeds up to 20 gigabits per second and has just been shown with millimeter waves of 15 gigahertz and higher frequency. 5G New Radio can incorporate lower frequencies, from 600 MHz to 6 GHz. However, the speeds in these lower frequencies are just unassumingly higher than new 4G frameworks, evaluated at 15% to 50% faster. The major difference between 4G and 5G is data rate. ITU promised nearly up to 20 Gbps while 4G can give you up to 150 Mbps. So, the increase in bandwidth will lead to increase in data rate and its committed information rate will be much higher than 4G but the committed information rate (CIR) is not demonstrated yet. The simulation predicts 490 Mbit/s median speeds for a configuration design of 3.5 GHz 5G Massive MIMO. It predicts a 1.4 Gbit/s median speed for a setup utilizing 28 GHz millimetre waves.

5G logo.

When bandwidth and data rate is increased, probability of error is also increased, so to cover these errors, dynamic modulation is needed that means modulation scheme will change according to situation. For example, during perfect conditions and environment, schemes up to 256 QAM can be used but during harsh environmental conditions, lower modulation schemes will be used e.g 128 QAM or 64 QAM. For the worst-case scenarios like in the case of storms, it would change its scheme to BPSK so to make sure signal connectivity to users.
Moreover, the frequency band will be increased in 5g so that shorter wavelength signals will be used and shorter wavelength will lead to reduction in antenna size. In Europe, 24.25-27.5 GHz is the proposed frequencies range.
If we talk about GSM architecture, the early generations of mobile we had the concept of micro cells and macro cells in clusters but now we are talking about Pico cells in clusters in 5G and we can accommodate more users in 5G than 4G.
If we talk about clusters, we divided areas into clusters and we have different frequency in every cells which are in hexagonal shapes. To cover these clusters, we place at least 3 antennas on every cluster at 120 degrees to cover all 360-degree coverage. In every cluster we have different frequencies so that we can differentiate users on frequencies and to avoid interference.  But we also have concept of frequency reuse, for that we reuse that frequency on another cluster to avoid ISI (inter symbol interference) and frequency overlap.

Concept of frequency reuse. Each color represents a specific frequency which is being reused in different clusters.

To make things easier to understand, every cellular company bought a license of frequency spectrum, for example a cellular company bought a license from 200MHZ to 2000 MHZ and they need to accommodate millions of users in this frequency spectrum and they also need to give gaps in frequencies as guard band (guard band means we to need to give gaps in frequencies to avoid interference because we differentiate users on frequencies) so we reuse frequency and follow different protocols like TDD and FDD so that users always have access to network.

Capability	Description	5G Target	Usage Scenario
Peak data rate	Maximum achievable data rate	20 Gbit/s	eMBB
User experienced data rate	Achievable data rate across coverage area	100 Mbit/s	eMBB
Latency	Radio network contribution to packet travel time	1 ms	URLLC
Mobility	Maximum speed for handoff and QoS requirements	500 km/h	eMBB/URLLC
Connection density	Total number of devices per unit area	106/km2	MMTC
Energy efficiency	Data sent/received per unit energy consumption (by device or network)	Equal to 4G	eMBB
Spectrum efficiency	Throughput per wireless bandwidth and per network cell	3-4x 4G	eMBB
Area traffic capacity	Total traffic across coverage area	10 (Mbit/s)/m2	eMBB

Note that 5G as defined by 3GPP includes spectrum below 6 GHz, with performance closer to 4G. The 3GPP definition is commonly used.

According to the ITU news, these are some latest development related to 5G:

·         SK Telecom and Nokia transmit data using standards-compliant 5G NR SA mode

·         South Korean telco simultaneously developing SA and NSA technology

·         KDDI and Samsung complete live 5G real-time free-viewpoint video test

·         China Mobile and Huawei show VR broadcasting over a 5G network slice