Here's a preview of the next generation of mobile Internet, naturally called 5G: ?Mobile industry dips its toes in 5G waters for next-gen networks - CNET (http://www.cnet.com/news/mobile-industry-dips-its-toes-in-5g-waters-for-next-gen-networks/)

​Mobile industry dips its toes in 5G waters for next-gen networks (http://www.cnet.com/news/mobile-industry-dips-its-toes-in-5g-waters-for-next-gen-networks/)

by Stephen Shankland - March 3, 2015 6:20 AM PST

Demonstrations at Mobile World Congress show the growing momentum toward the launch of faster, more responsive mobile networks in 2020.

BARCELONA -- The networking industry is showing new confidence it can make next-generation "5G" networking a practical reality.

Network equipment makers Ericsson and Nokia Networks are demonstrating the fifth-generation technology on the show floor here at the Mobile World Congress show. And a parade of executives and one government official have taken to the stage to extoll 5G's virtues.

"The 5G infrastructure is expected to become the nervous system of the digital society and digital economy," said Günther Oettinger, the European Commission member whose job is to encourage that very digital development.

5G networks will transfer data much faster than today's 3G and 4G when they start arriving in about five years, and mobile networking will look very different. A major increase in download speeds will help streaming video and instant app updates. Crucially, 5G will also bring shorter communication delays that will enable fast-response services like augmented reality, self-driving cars and online gaming features impossible today. Last, 5G should help sweep billions of new devices into the network through a transformation called the Internet of Things (IoT).

Korea Telecom CEO Chang-Gyu Hwang speaks at Mobile World Congress 2015.
Korea Telecom CEO Chang-Gyu Hwang speaks at Mobile World Congress about the positive changes that have resulted from 4G networks.
Stephen Shankland/CNET
With better networks, people can -- and do -- use their mobile devices more. In South Korea, the switch to 4G networks meant people use mobile devices to watch 14 times as much video, shop online 13 times as much and bank five times as much as before, said Chang-Gyu Hwang, chief executive of carrier Korea Telecom.

5G should further those increases and lead to entirely new services, too.

Carriers and network operators hope to start building 5G networks with a globally standardized version of the technology starting in 2020, though widespread adoption will take longer. Early trials should arrive in 2018, with projects set for the World Cup soccer tournament in Russia and the Winter Olympics in South Korea.

5G's higher data-transfer speeds

Today's LTE speeds peak at roughly 150Mbps (megabits per second) to 450Mbps, depending on which generation of the technology is used. 5G should reach much higher, with Nokia, Huawei and other companies betting on peak rates of 10 gigabits per second. In Huawei's view, that means the difference between downloading an 8GB movie in 6 seconds instead of 7 minutes.

At the show, Nokia demonstrated data-transfer speeds of more than 2Gbps. Although that's not as high as some rivals' speeds, there were two important features to its demonstration. First, it maintained the network connection between a stationary base station and a moving device at the other end of the connection. Second, it used ultra-high radio frequencies of 73.5GHz, said Mark Cudak, principal research specialist for Nokia Networks.

These high frequencies are a key part of meeting 5G's promise. Ericsson had its on demo, pumping 5.8Mbps of data using a 15GHz radio frequency. In contrast, today's phones use radio frequencies below about 3GHz.

Nokia demonstrated 5G prototype equipment at Mobile World Congress, with a receiver on the right moving back and forth while maintaining a 2Gbps radio link with the base station transmitter visible in the upper left. With 5G's tightly focused beams, it's harder to maintain a radio link with moving mobile phones than it is with today's 4G and 3G networks.
Nokia demonstrates 5G prototype equipment at Mobile World Congress, with a receiver on the right moving back and forth while maintaining a 2Gbps radio link with the base station transmitter visible in the upper left. With 5G's tightly focused beams, it's harder to maintain a radio link with moving mobile phones than it is with today's 4G and 3G networks.
Stephen Shankland/CNET
There are some bolder claims, too. In February, the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey made a splash by declaring its 5G network reached a stunning 1 terabit per second -- 100 times the 5G rate of 10Gbps rate the industry expects.

However, many aspects of that test remain unclear, including how far apart the transmitter and receiver were and how wide a slice of radio spectrum was used. In the real world, carriers' communications are confined to relatively narrow radio-frequency channels. But with a wider range of radio frequencies -- more bandwidth, in the physics sense of the term -- more data can be sent in a given period of time.

Big bandwidth

Nokia's demo used a whopping 1GHz slice of spectrum bandwidth, and Ericsson's used 400MHz.

Samsung's 5G tests have reached 7.5Gbps -- and for a moving vehicle, 1.2Gbps. Samsung's test used a 28GHz signal and a generous 800MHz slice of bandwidth.

One of the big challenges for moving to higher frequencies is that radio signals die out over short distances, have trouble penetrating building walls and can't go around corners in city blocks. With Ericsson's demo, data-transfer speeds dipped significantly when a person walked between the transmitter and receiver.

Part of the solution to the problem is sending radio in tight beams instead of today's approach blanketing large swaths of a region.

"We will have to use highly directional antennas to deliver our data rate," Nokia's Cudak said. In the demonstration, that beam was just 3 degrees wide, he said. The demonstration could hop from one beam to another that offered a better signal, a key part of adjusting to moving handsets.

Overall, Nokia expects to deliver 1Gbps to 95 percent of people within a 120-meter (393 feet) distance of its radio base station.

Lower latencies

5G networks will also lower an important network characteristic called latency that measures how long it takes for data, once requested, to actually arrive. High latency means services aren't snappy -- video chat with a long lag between when the second person starts hearing and seeing what the other just said, for example. Low latency means services are responsive, so an augmented-reality headset could fetch new data quickly enough to keep up with a person's changing field of view.

"Applications like self-driving cars need much lower latencies than 4G can provide," said Ken Hu, the deputy chairman and current CEO of Huawei. Latency only halved going from 3G to 4G, but it'll drop by a factor of 50 going to 5G, he said. "5G can reach an ultra-low latency of 1 millisecond."

What's that mean in the real world? A self-driving car linked with other cars and with roadway infrastructure, traveling at 100kmph (62mph), will travel 1.4 meters during the time needed to communicate over the 4G network. But with 5G, it'll travel just 2.8cm -- just over an inch -- during that communication time. That's much better for activating emergency braking or otherwise responding to changing conditions, he said.

Internet of Things

The 5G network also will encompass many more devices than today's mobile phones as cheap chips spread computing power to all kinds of devices.

"By 2020, according to different estimates, 30 to 50 billion objects will be connected to the Internet," said Stéphane Richard, CEO of French carrier Orange. "5G will be the key to this new IoT world."

Huawei expects even more -- 100 billion connected devices ranging from watches, glasses and running shoes, to shipping containers and robotic arms in factories. It's a mammoth challenge for the industry, but it's eased by the fact that many IoT devices won't need to constantly communicate massive amounts of data.

Setting the standard

An EU program called the 5G Public Private Partnership (5GPPP) has €700 million ($782 million) in funding to develop 5G by 2020, boosted by up to five times that amount from industry partners. There are other efforts, though, such as the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN), which raises concerns that finding a single global standard will be tough. On Monday, though, 5GPPP announced an alliance with another consortium, 4G Americas.

"The problem is that too many standards means no clear standard," Huawei's Hu said.

Yesterday, CNET also published online a story that will be printed in CNET Magazine's Spring issue: How 5G will push a supercharged network to your phone, home, car - CNET (http://www.cnet.com/news/how-5g-will-push-a-supercharged-network-to-your-phone-home-and-car/)

Note: If you click on the link to the CNET story, you'll get graphs that dramatically show how fast 5G really is.

How 5G will push a supercharged network to your phone, home, car (How 5G will push a supercharged network to your phone, home, car)

by Stephen Shankland - March 2, 2015 8:25 AM PST

The next evolution in wireless networking holds promises of self-driving cars and movies that download in the blink of an eye. 5G is big at this year's Mobile World Congress, but don't expect it until 2020.

Five years from now, you may be thanking your dog for helping to make you healthier, safer, more productive and smarter about what's happening in the world around you.

And it has nothing to do with taking Scruffy on long walks.

Instead, it has to do with faster, more powerful wireless networks. Today, the networks that drive our smartphones and Internet-connected devices are mostly based on 4G technology. But higher-performance fifth-generation technology, called 5G, is coming, and it promises to take us places we've never been before.

Here's where your dog comes in. 5G is considered key to the Internet of Things (IoT), the name given to the notion of tying just about every and any thing into the Net. Billions of sensors will be built into appliances, security systems, health monitors, door locks, cars and wearables -- from smartwatches to dog collars. Analyst firm Gartner predicts the number of networked devices will skyrocket from about 5 billion in 2015 to 25 billion by 2020.

All those sensors producing mountains of data should, in turn, spur carriers to spend billions upgrading their networks for 5G so they can cash in on your increased appetite for IoT data -- including updates to your smartphone on what Scruffy is up to throughout the day.

"You'll have tags on your dogs talking to devices in your home," says Femi Adeyemi, lead mobile architect for Fujitsu. "You'll know when your children come home. Cars on the highway will be autonomously managed."

Plus, 5G networks will be about 66 times faster than 4G. That speed opens up intriguing new capabilities. Self-driving cars can make time-critical decisions. Video chats will make us feel like we're all in the same room. And cities can monitor traffic congestion, pollution levels and parking demand -- and then feed that information to your smart car in real time.

Reasons to be eager for 5G

Expect plenty of benefits from the next-gen network.

New realities: 5G will push augmented reality and virtual reality into the mainstream. Augmented reality overlays information like walking directions, product prices or acquaintances' names over our view of the real world by, for example, projecting data onto a car windshield. Virtual reality creates an entirely artificial view. Both need to pull in new data almost instantly.
Instant gratification: Download speeds should increase from today's 4G peak of 150 megabits per second to at least 10 gigabits per second. That's fast enough to download "Guardians of the Galaxy" in 4 seconds instead of 6 minutes.
Lightning-fast response: In addition to cramming more bits into every second, 5G will shorten the lag time before the first bits show up. Waiting a few seconds for a streaming video to start over 4G is no big deal, but that's unacceptably slow for things like self-driving cars, where every millisecond counts. 4G ideally needs 15 to 25 milliseconds for one car to tell another behind it that it's begun emergency braking. That delay will drop to 1 millisecond with 5G.
It ain't easy

The wireless industry is fixated on delivering the first 5G networks by 2020. AT&T and Nokia Networks say the schedule is reasonable.

Craig Wigginton, leader of the telecom practice at consulting firm Deloitte & Touche, thinks 2022 is more realistic. And Tod Sizer, head of wireless research at Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Laboratories, doesn't expect widespread availability until 2025.

5G networks will transfer data much faster than today's 3G and 4G, handy for streaming video and instant app updates. Crucially, shorter communication delays should help fast-response services like augmented reality, video chat and online gaming.
5G networks will transfer data much faster than today's 3G and 4G, handy for streaming video and instant app updates.
CNET
Whatever the date, 5G is coming.

To deliver 5G, carriers will need to boost network capacity between phones and the big antennas, called base stations, they install every few miles.

They can start by tapping into unoccupied spectrum -- radio-wave territory relatively uncluttered with signals today. Radio waves vibrate with a frequency measured in megahertz or even faster gigahertz. Today's phones communicate at less than 3GHz; 5G will require higher frequency bands.

But radio waves at higher frequencies are harder to transmit over longer distances or if buildings and walls are in the way. To compensate, carriers will rely on advanced antenna technologies. These include massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output) antennas, which send many radio signals in parallel, and beamforming, which focuses radio energy in a specific direction.

Carriers will also pack base stations more closely together to improve the odds your phone will be near one. They will also supplement today's long-range "macrocells," which can reach up to about 20 miles, with lots of short-range "small cells," which can cover up to a few hundred feet.

Installing one macrocell and getting it running costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, while mounting small cells every block on power poles costs tens of thousands of dollars apiece, Fujitsu's Adeyemi says.

It's too soon to say how much 5G will cost, but carriers' ongoing 4G build-out may total $1.7 trillion through 2020, says Dan Warren, senior technologist for the GSMA mobile industry group. Carriers won't foot the 5G bill without the prospect of lots of new paying customers.

IoT should deliver those customers. The market will hit $3.04 trillion by 2020, says researcher IDC. Network-equipment maker Cisco Systems, which has a vested interest in IoT's success, predicts the market will be worth $19 trillion over the next decade.

Smarten up

People joke about Internet-connected refrigerators, but the idea isn't marketing puffery.

Google's Nest thermostats and Net-connected smoke detectors are already making homes smarter. Automakers are developing connected cars with seat-back video and self-driving safety features. Fitness bands, sleep monitors and smartwatches will soon combine data gathered about your vital signs, including breathing rate, heart rate and temperature. That holistic view could keep us healthier longer and even warn us of an imminent heart attack or stroke. Cities, already getting smarter, could become downright brainiacs. Barcelona, Spain, uses more than a million sensors to monitor traffic, pollution, noise, parking, water pressure, weather and electricity.

In Nice, France, more than 200 sensors have been installed on streetlights, in the roadway and on garbage bins. They collect data on traffic flow, public lighting, parking, waste and pollution in the city's center.

While carriers' base stations can handle hundreds of simultaneous users now, that's not enough to accommodate the billions of new devices that will hook into the Internet of Things. Equipment makers must increase base station connectivity capacity by a factor of 1,000, says Bell Labs' Sizer. "My research team ran the numbers. This isn't that crazy."

It'll be a different world. And maybe when it's easier to find Scruffy after he gets lost at the dog park, he'll be able to thank you for it, too.

Editors' note: This story appears in the Spring 2015 issue CNET Magazine.

The only problem with 5g today, is the limited range. You're not going to get cell vendors on board with this unless they can correct the range issue. 5g "towers" are small enough to go on telephone poles so we don't need the big cell towers clogging up the view everywhere, but we'd have to have hundreds of times the number of existing towers to have the range we need. The major problem there is going to be in rural areas where it's simply not feasible to install 5g.