Team Partners Telecommunications

So, What’s 5G and Why Should I Be Interested?

Posted on Feb 17, 2019

Do you remember the good old days of 3G? What, that’s all you can get sometimes? Good grief, you mean you don’t have instant access to 4G wherever you are? And now they’re bringing in 5G instead of just getting 4G to work properly. It’s outrageous.

Here’s the good news. Apparently there won’t be a 6G, at least there won’t be if “they” get 5G right. Happy now?

Take a deep breathe, here’s a potted history:

1G was introduced in Japan back in 1979. It was an analogue system that had the disadvantage of suffering from lots of radio type noise.

2G, introduced in Finland in 1991. 2G introduced the ability to send digitally encrypted text messages, and voice calls were of course noise free, being digital. 2G enjoyed data transfer rates of up to 9.6Kps, but had the disadvantage that it required a dedicated channel to be allotted for any on-going voice call. If perchance you’re still using 2G I’m sorry to have to report that systems are being shut down this year. Perhaps we could interest you in:

3G? Ah, but not so fast, because there was also

2.5G/ GPRS, which, apart from anything else, transmitted at 64-144 Kbps, and

2.75G/EDGE, which provided improved data rates again, used 8PSK encoding and had the ability to handle call forwarding and short messaging.

Meanwhile,3G. 3G represented a quantum leap forward. Introduced in 2002 it increased the efficient use of the spectrum available by compressing audio content, it supported up to 2Mbps for stationary or low mobility users and up to 284 Kbps for mobile. 3G opened up the world of web browsing, international roaming and high security, but it required more transmitting power to achieve it...about which more later.

4G was known and talked about as long ago as 2002, but really came in to our lives in 2010. 4G has allowed us to live stream data and hold video calls; a single carrier can support up to 200 voice channels simultaneously, LANs and WANs, all with a data rate of up to 1Gbps for immobile users and 100Mbps for mobile.

And 5G?

As you may have picked up earlier in this blog, it’s thought that 5G will be the cornucopia that will make 6G and beyond unnecessary. You’ll see it being mentioned and deployed over the next couple of years, it will use what are known as MMWs (Millimeter Waves) as a carrier and it will support a data rate of 1Gpbs and it’s key feature will be MIMO, multiple-input and multiple-output, a method of multiplying the capacity of a radio link using multiple transmission and receiving antenna to exploit multipath propagation, in other words send and receiving more than one data signal at the same time over the same radio channel. Used in their hundreds, this ability to send and receive several data signals simultaneously will open the way to driverless cars, radio surgery, 8k video transmission and a host of other clever Internet of Things technologies that have been waiting for the right data carrier to arrive.

Of course, if you’re concerned about the health hazards of radio waves then 5G is nothing but bad news as it will inevitably encourage the growth in radio responsive everything and, because it will rely on a far greater number of transmitters, it will be harder to get away from ever more invasive radio waves. But that’s a blog for another day...