This would be the future of mobile networks with 5G

Although there are currently many for which the 4G is still a distant dream, manufacturers and operators are already looking beyond. The up to 300 Mbps download time offered to us today 4G networks seem not to be sufficient for future demands and the industry is already preparing the new leap, the arrival of 5G.

But while it is beginning to talk about it, the fact is that manufacturers are still on the foundations of a technology that has already proven that it can deliver up to more than 7 Gbps in real environments. Let us know in more detail how it would work and that will bring us back the 5G technology.

Objective: 2020

Indeed, by 2020 it probably will not begin to arrive but is already underway. With the 4G still in development, at least in Spain, network device manufacturers have already set a timetable for getting to work on the 5G. Until the arrival of 2017, it is time for research, testing and prototyping, one years later for the creation of the standard, another year for the development of products and, finally, its deployment in 2020.

The reality is that currently the 5G has just come out of the labs. At the end of 2014 we saw how Samsung was conducting tests in real, really promising environments. In the test carried out on a vehicle traveling at four kilometers per hour, the speed reached 7.5 Gbps of unloading speed.

But it is that traveling at 100 kilometers per hour, is quite problematic with other types of networks due to the jumps between antennas that often involve connection losses, the Koreans achieved a download rate of 1.2 Gbps, also achieving that the connection is Stable, without disconnections or interruptions.

For those who want to dream even more, the researchers from the University of Surrey, in the United Kingdom, have achieved a record out of all the pools, 1 Tbps download. In your case we talk about tests in an isolated environment, with a transmission only 100 meters away, but who knows where we will reach in the future.

Speeds of vertigo, ridiculous latency

The goal of any new generation of mobile network is to multiply the speed of the connection, but behind the 5G there is more than that. It is no longer just about delivering vertigo speeds, but also making connections gain in quality, on the one hand by improving the number of terminals that each antenna can service simultaneously but also reducing latency.

The first big difference between the current 4G and the 5G idea that there is currently is the frequency that is used. While frequencies between 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz are most commonly used in 4G, bands of between 26 and 38 GHz have been used in the case of the 5G tests carried out so far.

But in addition to speed, latency is one of the important points in future 5G networks. We would be talking about that this new technology would be able to reduce it to values close to the millisecond. What are you looking for with this? The improvement for example in online games would be obvious, but even more important is when it comes to video conferences, where having the least possible delay is vital for a fluid communication that allows us to work with someone who is far from us.

The challenges of implementing a new technology go beyond speed and latency. First of all, it will be that all countries agree on what bands will be dedicated to the 5G, in order to make that spectrum space available, but also so that we can travel without worrying about the bands that use in other countries. Also the use of such high frequencies can be a problem when the signal penetrates buildings, a problem that we will have to see how it faces.

Apart from the battery consumption of the devices, they promise that it will decrease, although it will be necessary to see how they do it, another important problem to examine will be the cost of the deployments. South Korea and Europe have already announced that the target is for the start of deployments in 2020, although operators will also have to be in the business of investing. These will obviously have to look for ways to monetize such investments.

Not just for your smartphone

At this point you will all be thinking about the speed with which we can download a movie from our mobile, or those videochats without interruptions or delays that we can do in the future with the 5G. But the mobile networks, thought in their day to communicate people, will take a big step with this new evolution, revolutionizing the communication between machines.

There are two important points in the 5G that will make this generation of machines. On the one hand the speeds mentioned above are not speeds that will be distributed between the devices connected to the same antenna, but the base stations will be able to give said speeds to each connected terminal, reducing the usual problems that occur in Large agglomerations.

We think of crowds of people with their mobiles, but with the growth of connected devices that we will see by 2020 (cars, wearables, clothes and to know that other things that we would not imagine today) the mobiles will only represent a small part of the connected devices To the antennas.

The other point that makes 5G the generation of the machines will be its ability to work with different types and generations of networks. On paper, devices compatible with the fifth generation will be able to change networks (to other mobile networks, WiFi or other types of networks) without the user perceive that change and instantly.

5G, tested on the MWC

All in all, a technology still under investigation, the next Mobile World Congress will mark the start of the 5G race. While some operators will show us the benefits of the 4G Samsung together with the Korean operator SK Telecom will try to leave us with the open mouth with demonstrations of that 5G that still is seen far in the horizon.

Surely they will not be the only ones to let us see how the 5G is developing, so we will be attentive to all the new developments around the next generation of mobile networks, to tell you all the details.