What you need to know about 5G technology
This year, a great technological change will finally begin.
It is an update of our wireless systems that will only happen once in this
decade and that mobile users in the United States will be able to start using
in a matter of months.
However, it's not just about faster phones. The transition
to the new 5th -generation cellular networks - known as 5G for short
- will also impact many other types of devices, including industrial robots,
security cameras, drones and cars that send traffic data to each other’s. This
new 5g technology will go beyond the current wireless technology, known as 4G,
and will offer mobile internet speeds that will allow people to download entire
movies in seconds and will most likely bring great changes to video games,
sports and shopping.
Officials in the United States and China believe that 5G
networks will give them a competitive advantage. Faster networks could help expand
the use of artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies.
Surely, we will hear more about the 5G networks at events
such as the big consumer electronics convention CES this January in Las Vegas
and the MWC Barcelona (formerly known as the Mobile World Congress) in February
in Spain. Device manufacturers are introducing devices that will integrate it.
Samsung recently showed prototypes of 5G smartphones. Many
other manufacturers are rushing to be part of the trend, although Apple is not
expected to participate in the first wave of 5G. Analysts predict that iPhones
with the new technology will not arrive until 2020. An Apple spokeswoman
declined to comment.
This is what you should know.
What exactly is 5G technology?
The 5G network, a technology still in development, is the
successor of the 4G mobile telephony network, whose mission is to streamline
the browsing and downloading experience on the Internet. Large telephone
companies, such as Samsung and Ericsson, announced at the end of 2014 that they
would begin a series of tests involving the 5G network as a solution to the
problems that plague wireless navigation companies today. Many of the
experiments have reached a maximum speed of 5gbps, but the designed prototypes
have given more than satisfactory results for most of the companies that have
joined this important project.
In Korea it reached 7gbps, with a stable connection, being
in a moving vehicle. However, in the United Kingdom the highest speed was
achieved, expressed with 1tbps. This is summarized by a hopeful possibility
that, in the future, the download speeds will be extraordinarily fast, with a
powerful stability. The frequencies used in these tests range from 26 to 38
GHz, a band somewhat far from the reality of the 4G network, which uses a
frequency between 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz.
Not only smartphones will be the devices that
can use this technology, but also cars, televisions, wearables and those
devices that are developed by the time their deployment begins.
Strictly speaking, 5G is a set of fundamental technical
rules that define the operation of a cellular network, including the radio
frequencies that are used and the way in which various components such as
microprocessors and antennas process radio signals and exchange data.
Since the first cell phones were shown in the seventies,
engineers from several companies have agreed on the specifications of cellular
networks, which are assigned a new generation of technology every decade, more
or less . To obtain the benefits of 5G technology, users will have to buy new
cell phones, while providers will have to install new transmission equipment to
offer this faster service.
How fast will the network be?
The answer depends on where you live, what wireless services
you use, and when you decide to adopt 5G technology.
Qualcomm, the maker of wireless microprocessors, said it had
demonstrated maximum download speeds in the 5G network of 4.5 gigabits per
second, but predicts that initial speeds will average around 1.4 gigabits. That
translates to a speed almost twenty times faster than the current 4G
experience.
The 5G speeds will be particularly noticeable in the
emission of continuous video of higher resolution. In addition, downloading a
movie with the average speeds quoted by Qualcomm would take seventeen seconds
with the 5G network, compared to the six minutes required in a 4G.
For example, instead of remembering to download a season of
your favourite series before arriving at the airport, you could do so while
waiting in line to board the plane, said
Justin Denison, Samsung's senior vice president.
Is that the only speed that matters?
No. There is another type of speed, a lag known as latency,
which may become more important with the 5G network.
When you use your mobile phone-when searching for something
online, for example-the answer is not immediate. The most common is that there
is a lag from 50 to several hundred milliseconds, in part because signals must
pass between different switch canters of service providers. The 5G network,
which uses a newer network technology, was designed to reduce latency and to be
only a few milliseconds. It was also designed to send signals more reliably
than with the first cellular networks, which often dispense percentages of data
that are not essential for tasks such as watching a movie on a cell phone.
This improvement could bring many benefits, especially in
fields such as virtual reality, VR. Higher resolution VR applications generally
require bulky devices that are connected by a cable to the closest personal
computer to generate 3D images. With the 5G network, this could be transmitted wireless to other machines, so users could move around and it would be easier
to develop
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