No one is talking about it very much, but the introduction of fifth generation (5G) wireless technology is worth putting into your planning horizon.
My sense is that it can be a game changer for almost every business model. That’s the conclusion from recent conversations with several West Coast thought leaders and a recent IEEE article.
In a nutshell, 5G portends to be a big deal – much bigger than the jump from 3G to 4G or 4G LTE. What I have learned (EEs will consider this obvious!) is that 5G is not one thing. Rather, it’s a bucket of different technical advances which can be mixed and matched together. We don’t know yet how the global EE community will put this together; what standards they will choose, but drawing from a recent article in an IEEE publication, and a couple of conversations with much smarter people, here’s a snapshot of what could be “in the box” of 5G technologies:
| Technology 5G Element* |
Comparison to 4G | Explanation/Potential Applications | |
| 4G | 5G | ||
| Data Rate | 1 Gb/s | 20 Gb/s | The maximum transmission data rate (gigabits per second) will be 20 times as fast as 4G LTE, while the average user will experience rates 10 to 100 times as fast. |
| Spectral Efficiency | 1.5 k/s/Hz | 4.5 b/s/HZ | 5G will improve downlink spectral efficiency (bits per second per hertz) threefold. |
| Data Processing | 0.1 Mb/s/m | 10 Mb/s/m | The network will be able to process 100 times as much data in a given area (megabits per second per square meter). |
| Device Density | 100,000/sq. meters | 1,000,000/sq. meters | About 900,000 more devices per square kilometer will be able to connect to the network. |
| Mobility | 350 km/h | 500 km/h | 4G can provide data to devices moving at up to 350 kilometers per hour. 5G will provide data to devices moving at up to 500 km/h. |
| Transmission Delay | 10 ms | 1 ms | 5G will have one-tenth the latency (milliseconds) of 4G. |
| Energy Consumption | 100 millijoules |
1 millijoule |
4G takes 1 millijoule to transfer a 1,000-bit data packet. 5G will be able to transfer packets 100 times as efficiently. |
* All data from Spectrum North America (IEEE.org), Oct. 2015.