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5g
Everything You Need to Know About 5G
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every new generation of wireless
networks delivers faster speeds and more
functionality to our smartphones 1g
brought us the very first cell phones 2g
let us text for the first time 3G
brought us online and 4g delivered the
speeds that we enjoy today but as more
users come online 4G networks have just
about reached the limit of what they're
capable of at a time when users want
even more data for their smart phones
and devices now we're headed toward 5g
the next generation of wireless it will
be able to handle a thousand times more
traffic than today's networks and it'll
be up to 10 times faster than 4G LTE
just imagine downloading an HD movie in
under a second and then let your
imagination run wild 5g will be the
foundation for virtual reality
autonomous driving the Internet of
Things and stuff we can't even yet
imagine but what exactly is a 5g network
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the truth is experts can't tell us what
5g actually is because they don't even
know yet but right now there are 5 brand
new technologies emerging as a
foundation of 5g millimeter waves small
cells massive MIMO beamforming and full
duplex first up technology number one
millimeter waves your smartphone and
other electronic devices in your home
use very specific frequencies on the
radio frequency spectrum typically those
under 6 gigahertz but these frequencies
are starting to get more crowded
carriers can only squeeze so many bits
of data on the same amount of radio
frequency spectrum as more devices come
online we're going to start to see
slower service and more dropped
connections the solution is to open up
some new real estate so researchers are
experimenting with broadcasting on
shorter millimeter waves those that fall
between 30 and 300 gigahertz this
section of spectrum has never been used
before for mobile devices and opening it
up means more bandwidth for everyone but
there is a catch millimetre waves can't
travel well through buildings or other
obstacles and they tend to be absorbed
by plants and rain to get around this
problem we'll need technology number 2
small cell networks today's wireless
networks rely on large high powered cell
towers to broadcast their signals over
long distances
but remember higher-frequency millimeter
waves have a harder time traveling
through obstacles which means if you
move behind one you lose your signal
small cell networks would solve that
problem using thousands of low-power
mini base stations these base stations
would be much closer together than
traditional towers forming a sort of
relay team to transmit signals around
obstacles this would be especially
useful in cities as the user moved
behind an obstacle his smartphone would
automatically switch to a new base
station in better range of his device
allowing him to keep his connection next
up technology number three massive MIMO
my most stands for multiple-input
multiple-output today's 4g base stations
have about a dozen ports for antennas
that handle all cellular traffic but
massive MIMO base stations can support
about a hundred ports this could
increase the capacity of today's
networks by a factor of 22 or more of
course massive MIMO comes with its own
complications
today's cellular antennas broadcast
information in every direction at once
and all of those crossing signals could
cause serious interference which brings
us to technology number 4 beam farming
beamforming is like a traffic signalling
system for cellular signals instead of
broadcasting in every direction it would
allow a base station to send a focus
stream of data to a specific user this
precision prevents interference and it's
way more efficient
that means stations could handle more
incoming and outgoing data streams at
once here's how it works say you're in a
cluster of buildings and you're trying
to make a phone call your signal is
ricocheting off of surrounding buildings
and criss-crossing with other signals
from users in the area a massive MIMO
base station receives all of these
signals and keeps track of the timing
and the direction of their arrival it
then uses signal processing algorithms
to triangulate exactly where each signal
is coming from and plots the best
transmission route back through the air
to each phone sometimes it'll even
bounce individual packets of data in
different directions off of buildings or
other objects to keep signals from
interfering with each other the result
is a coherent data stream sent only to
you which brings us to technology number
5 full duplex if you've ever used a wall
gataki you know that in order to
communicate you have to take turns
talking and listening that's kind of a
drag
today's cellular base stations have that
exact same hold up a basic antenna can
only do one job at a time either
transmit or receive this is because of a
principle called
reciprocity which is the tendency for
radio waves to travel both forward and
backward along the same frequency to
understand this it helps to think of a
wave like a train loaded up with data
the frequency it's traveling on is like
the train track and if there's a second
train trying to go in the opposite
direction on the same track you're going
to get some interference up until now
the solution has been to have the trains
take turns or to put all the trains on
different tracks or frequencies but you
can make things a lot more efficient by
working around reciprocity researchers
have used silicon transistors to create
high speed switches that halt the
backward role of these waves it's kind
of like a signalling system that can
momentarily reroute to train so that
they can get past each other that means
there's a lot more getting done on each
track a whole lot faster we're still
working out many of the kinks with
millimeter waves small cell networks
massive MIMO beamforming and full duplex
in fact all of 5g is still a work in
progress
it will likely include other new
technologies too and making all of these
systems work together will be a whole
other challenge but if experts can
figure that out
ultra fast 5g service could arrive in
the next five years
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