A 5G wireless cell phone is in your future
- Lou Frenzel for electronicdesign.com May 13th, 2013
- Source: http://electronicdesign.com/blog/5g-wireless-cell-phone-your-future
We have yet to fully realize real 4G wireless systems and already there is news of 5G technology in a recent release from Samsung. Right now this 5G technology is in the research and development stage but you can relax knowing that the next wave of high speed wireless is on the way.
The fourth generation (4G) is what we all now accept as Long Term Evolution (LTE). The ITU originally said that LTE was just 3.9G and that LTE Advanced is the real 4G. But the carriers dubbed LTE as 4G so that is what it is despite formal definitions. We are not yet seeing LTE-A but it is in the works and we should be seeing some basestation and handset implementations next year. Right now, most carriers are still rolling out standard LTE where their funds and spectrum permit.
While LTE-A is theoretically capable of delivering 1 Gb/s over-the-air data, in practice, with typical environmental conditions, actual speeds will be much less than that. Besides, to get Gb/s speeds the wireless operation needs to be at a higher frequency. On top of that the carriers are running out of spectrum and the only sane solution for the future is to look at available spectrum beyond 4 GHz. The millimeter bands of 30 GHz to 300 GHz are available and offer considerable room to expand. Lower frequencies in the 11 GHz to 30 GHz range are also a potential location.
