ISE Magazine, December 2019

DECEMBER 2019 WWW ISEMAG COM 19 5G For years the promise of 5G has been dangling in front of us with visions of being able to change the world Its ability to greatly improve network speeds manage more devices have better coverage use more spectrum be more energy efficient and offer lower network latency have profound implications across every industry with social economic and technological effects Network operators and equipment manufacturers have been working furiously in the labs and in the field Countless engineers testers network architects and technicians have spent untold hours to bring us to this point 5G is here now It is now a commercial reality at the very beginning of its technological lifetime Successful Beginning The past few months of 5G commercial network launches have been a whirlwind of interest for the wireless industry As of August 2019 there were 29 commercial networks launched worldwide that adhered to 3GPP standardized 5G technology according to research firm TeleGeography https www telegeography com That number is anticipated to grow to about 50 commercial 5G networks worldwide by the end of 2019 These 5G networks will handle the explosive growth of mobile data Cisco forecasts that by 2022 nearly 12 of global mobile traffic will come from 5G which equates to over 422 million 5G capable devices generating approximately 21 GB of traffic per month The intensity of the traffic equates to 46 annual growth and an estimated 39 billion IoT connections by 2022 How will 5G networks be able to handle all the increased demand for mobile wireless data According to Rysavy Research https rysavy com wireless network capacity doubles every 3 years Expanding capacity of the networks is being driven by more and more efficiently used spectrum increased density of cells smarter antennas increased fiber density and improved core and edge network architecture These efforts are resulting in 5G networks that offer several improvements over existing 4G LTE networks 5G has improved network capacity and throughput with peak data speeds up to 20 Gbps downlinks and up to 10 Gbps uplinks It will have standardized network architecture to support up to 1 million devices per square kilometer and manage devices that are moving up to 500 kilometers per hour In addition a fully developed 5G network can be over 100 times as energy efficient as a 4G LTE network while offering 1 millisecond network latency time 5G also offers spectrum support for many frequencies including spectrum bands above 6 GHz millimeter wave availability of Time Division and Fixed Division Duplex TDD and FDD communications modes and use of both licensed and unlicensed spectrum Moreover the transition to 5G has been happening simultaneously with continued advances in 4G LTE Because 5G New Radios 5G NR interoperate with 4G networks they Figure 1 Network Transformation