5G Mobile / Cellular Technology

- preliminary details and information about the technology being developed for 5th generation or 5G mobile or cellular telecommunications systems

With the 4G telecommunications systems now starting to be deployed, eyes are looking towards the development of 5th generation or 5G technology and services.

Although the deployment of any cellular system takes many years, development of the 5G technology systems is being investigated. The new 5G technologies will need to be chosen developed and perfected to enable timely and reliable deployment.

The new 5th generation, 5G technology for cellular systems will probably start to come to fruition around 2020 with deployment following on afterwards.

5G mobile systems status

The current status of the 5G technology for cellular systems is very much in the early development stages. Several companies are looking into the technologies that could be used to become part of the system.

In addition to this the standards bodies, particularly 3GPP are aware of the development but are not actively planning the 5G systems yet.

Many of the technologies to be used for 5G will start to appear in the systems used for 4G and then as the new 5G cellular system starts to formulate in a more concrete manner, they will be incorporated into the new 5G cellular system.

5G cellular systems overview

As the different generations of cellular telecommunications have evolved, each one has brought its own improvements. The same will be true of 5G technology.

• First generation, 1G:   These phones were analogue and were the first mobile or cellular phones to be used. Although revolutionary in their time they offered very low levels of spectrum efficiency and security.
• Second generation, 2G:   These were based around digital technology and offered much better spectrum efficiency, security and new features such as text messages and low data rate communications.
• Third generation, 3G:   The aim of this technology was to provide high speed data. The original technology was enhanced to allow data up to 14 Mbps and more.
• Fourth generation, 4G:   This was an all-IP based technology capable of providing data rates up to 1 Gbps.

Any new 5th generation, 5G cellular technology needs to provide significant gains over previous systems to provide an adequate business case for mobile operators to invest in any new system.

Facilities that might be seen with 5G technology include far better levels of connectivity and coverage. The term World Wide Wireless Web, or WWWW is being coined for this.

For 5G technology to be able to achieve this, new methods of connecting will be required as one of the main drawbacks with previous generations is lack of coverage, dropped calls and low performance at cell edges. 5G technology will need to address this.

5G technology and concepts

There are many new concepts that are being investigated and developed for the new 5th generation mobile system. Some of these include:

• Pervasive networks :   This technology being considered for 5G cellular systems is where a user can concurrently be connected to several wireless access technologies and seamlessly move between them.
• Group cooperative relay:   This is a technique that is being considered to make the high data rates available over a wider area of the cell. Currently data rates fall towards the cell edge where interference levels are higher and signal levels lower.
• Cognitive radio technology:   If cognitive radio technology was used for 5th generation, 5G cellular systems, then it would enable the user equipment / handset to look at the radio landscape in which it is located and choose the optimum radio access network, modulation scheme and other parameters to configure itself to gain the best connection and optimum performance.
• Wireless mesh networking and dynamic ad-hoc networking:   With the variety of different access schemes it will be possible to link to others nearby to provide ad-hoc wireless networks for much speedier data flows.
• Vandermonde-subspace frequency division multiplexing for modulation:   It will be necessary to provide much more flexible and efficient forms of modulation for 5G cellular systems. This is one format being considered.
• Smart antennas:   Another major element of any 5G cellular system will be that of smart antennas. Using these it will be possible to alter the beam direction to enable more direct communications and limit interference and increase overall cell capacity.

There are many new techniques and technologies that will be used in the new 5G cellular or mobile telecommunications system. These new 5G technologies are still being developed and the overall standards have not yet be defined. However as the required technologies develop, they will be incorporated into the new system which will be defined by the standards bodies over the coming years.

By Ian Poole

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