EU, South Korea Collaborate On Superfast 5G Standards

jfruh writes The European Commission and the South Korean government announced that they will be harmonizing their radio spectrum policy in an attempt to help bring 5G wireless tech to market by 2020. While the technology is still in an embryonic state, but one South Korean researcher predicts it could be over a thousand times faster than current 4G networks.

Comments

How much more can we squeeze?

[i kan reed]

There's only so much theoretical bandwidth on the broadcast range e/m spectrum. How much gets reserved for non-consumer purposes? How many towers/area can we afford? There's gotta be a theoretical fundamental limit, somewhere, right? Like there is with Moore's law?

Re:How much more can we squeeze?

[AndroSyn]

The limit you are looking for, the Shannon limit is explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:How much more can we squeeze?

[Shakrai]

The Shannon–Hartley theorem (aka Shannon capacity) is the term you're looking for. Modern wireless networks use MIMO (multiple input multiple output) concepts to boost this capacity and squeeze more bits into the same slice of spectrum.

Re:How much more can we squeeze?

[petermgreen]

Though the biggest problem on modern wireless networks is not "noise" in the traditional sense but interference between cells. The combination of such interference (which looks and acts similar to noise given modern modulation techniques) with the fading inherent in mobile microwave devices makes it very hard to achive more than a few bits/sec/hz on average across the celll.

Conventional MIMO helps a little but the close spacing of the antennas means the channels have low independence limiting the gains.

So that gives a couple of options. One is to move to higher frequencies where there is more bandwidth available and where signal strength tends to fall off quicker. Downsides are the cost of the hardware and if the signal falls off too quickly that limits the environments in which it can be delployed to very high density ones. The other one would be to implement cross-cell MIMO but that would require a heck of a lot of backhaul work.

Re:How much more can we squeeze?

[YoopDaDum]

As said by others the fundamental limit is given by Shannon. This defines a maximum throughput given a spectrum bandwidth and S/N ratio. In current technologies we're pretty close to this. This also indicates how to increase the total throughput, which can comes from:

• - Adding channels. This is what MIMO spatial multiplexing (SM) is about;
• - Increasing the used spectrum bandwidth. There is a lot of spectrum at high frequencies, with new challenges, and one option for 5G is to use this;
• - Increase the signal to noise ratio. This is what beam-forming is about.

Having more MIMO SM layers (i.e. concurrent channels) is not practical. The complexity of a MMSE decoder isO(L^3) with L the number of layers, so it gets ugly quickly. Today MIMO SM is typically limited to 2 layers in practice, with 4 likely coming and 8 the practical limit (and that may not be so practical really...).

Using very high frequencies (above 10 GHz) gives access to a lot of free spectrum, but the higher one go the lower the reach for a given power budget. To compensate for the high attenuation this is coupled with massive multi-antennas, the talk for 5G is 64 to 256. This is split between a few very costly MIMO SM layers and the rest for cheap beam-forming. So for example 256 antennas would behave like four 64 patches BF antennas for 4 layers MIMO. Of course with that many antennas and RF transceiver you have to compromise in cost and quality. So it's a lot of poor receive chains, vs. a few very high quality ones today. But there's still the potential to gain overall.
It has challenges though: it will still be for small cells (low reach) and rather low mobility (the beam steering cannot track high speed mobiles, plus small cells don't work wall for highly mobile devices: too many handovers). But because most people are low speed and the places where capacity is most needed are urban centers where small cells are ok, it still can be a win.

But as one can see, high speed 5G won't be universal like 4G is. By this I mean that 4G can (and will) completely replace 2G and 3G in time, while this high frequencies / massive BF 5G could only complement 4G is high density urban places, but will never be suitable for lower density parts (rural) where 4G would stay.

And then there's the elephant in the room: a lot of the improvements in telecoms have been riding on Moore's law. With the scaling problems that start now to be more openly discussed, how much more processing power we can use for 5G and what the users are prepared to pay (cost and power) for all these improvements are interesting questions.

Re:How much more can we squeeze?

[Shatrat]

Moore's law is a terrible example as it's not based on any theory or math. It's more like "Moore's Observation that has held fairly true for a few decades".

Re:How much more can we squeeze?

[ebno-10db]

We have had schemes to hit the shannon limit for as long as the limit has been known.

Practical schemes are much more recent, but yes we do have ones now that are so close it makes very little difference. Then there is the finite BW issue:

different than bandwidth or spectrum

Which is where our old buddy Nyquist comes in. Of course you can overcome that with more complex constellations, but then Shannon becomes more of a problem. Between these two guys they've really got us constrained.

Re:How much more can we squeeze?

[sjames]

No, he's right. MIMO can make several effective communications channels out of the same slice of spectrum by using the multople antennae as a phase array.

Re:Roll out some real 4G first, then we can talk 5

[Shakrai]

LTE was first proposed in 2003-2004 and lab tested in 2005-2006, which was years before 3G networks were fully deployed. It will likewise be years before there are real world trials of 5G technology, then some time after that before consumer gear becomes available at affordable prices and carriers being deployment.

Now you can blow through your 2GB of data at $30

[hsmith]

In 30 seconds!

Re:a THOUSAND times faster than 4G?

[RJFerret]

I believe the "could be" part, if it's just 10% faster s/he's right.

And an attempt by 2020 means more like 2026, and the US will have an incompatible slower version around 2030.

Jaded, I am.

no roaming at $15-$20 an meg when you go to

[Joe_Dragon]

no roaming at $15-$20 an meg when you go to EU and South Korea from the USA.

Do you have $30K+ for each 30 seconds of use and how long before you get cut off? You may be able to hit 500K + in a day before the system has time to cut you off.

It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet...

[iampiti]

...is consistently faster than our wired home connections.
It all sounds a little weird to me: Isn't a dedicated cable always much more reliable and capable than a wireless connection? That's what I thought at least.
I guess it's cheaper to deploy antennas every few hundred meters than to wire every home

Re:It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet

[3.5 stripes]

I somehow doubt that wireless will be faster, but for the cost of scale infrastructure, antennas and base stations aren't cheap, but the will probably serve many more customers (each with a monthly subscription) than a DSLAM or Coax (or fiber) deployment, so the costs probably will have a better ROI.

5G

[rossdee]

5G is about 49 meters per second per second

Re:Roll out some real 4G first, then we can talk 5

[hduff]

What the fuck are they talking about? We don't even have 4G yet, and they are already talking about 5G?

I'm holding out for 6G.

It won't matter anyway

[EETech1]

I have 4G now, and it is still as slow as 3G, which is as slow as 2G, which is as slow as 1Xrtt when everyone is using their phones and the pipe to the tower is full. I often see 10 - 30 Kbps during peak times.

During the middle of the night, 1 bar will get me 1.3 - 1.9Mbps on 3G, and 3 - 5 Mbps on 4G, but during the day, I struggle to get 100Kbps on 3G or 4G, even with 5 bars.

I can watch my download speed increase as everyone goes to bed. It's funny (sad) to graph my download speed and see it jump up on the hour, and jump a little less on the half hour as the pipe opens up.

Cheers

Re:It won't matter anyway

[3.5 stripes]

I've downloaded 200MB of stuff in about 5-10 secs on 4G here, but I imagine that there's a pretty serious infrastructure hereabouts.

Re:It won't matter anyway

[don.g]

Wow. I'm in a small city (43,000 inhabitants) in New Zealand, and have fibre at home. NZD99/mo, 30Mbps down, 10Mbps up, really unlimited, no "fair use clause." I could pay another NZD30/mo if I wanted 100Mbps down, 50Mbps up, and those prices are likely to come down pretty soon. The government is funding a rollout of the fibre network to most of the country's urban population.

If I wasn't in a fibre area there's a 50% chance (providing I was urban) I could get VDSL. And if not, I'd still be able to get 10Mbps ADSL2 unless I was somewhere semi-rural, at which point the speeds degrade to what you're getting in Seattle.

I've been to the USA. Your cellular networks have terrible reception -- I remember having no reception in a restaurant in downtown San Francisco -- and are far too expensive. Just as your ISPs are capping your previously unlimited fixed-line connections, ours are uncapping theirs.

Re:It won't matter anyway

[dave420]

I regularly get over 2MB/s (megabytes/s) using bittorrent on my LTE phone, in the middle of the day.

Re:a THOUSAND times faster than 4G?

[hduff]

I believe the "could be" part, if it's just 10% faster s/he's right.

And an attempt by 2020 means more like 2026, and the US will have an incompatible slower version around 2030.

Jaded, I am.

You're being too damn optimistic.

Re:It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet

[gstoddart]

Somehow, I doubt it actually will be faster.

The cell companies will throttle, and continue to massively over-subscribe.

Pretty much every advancement they've touted as bringing faster, better, cheaper has translated into "not much faster", "slightly better (for them)", and in no way at all cheaper.

I have very little faith that most wireless companies will do anything but squeeze us for money money and more profits, while giving us the same service (or worse) than we already have.

That's not what we need in the US

[jtownatpunk.net]

In the US, we need cheaper wireless, not faster. I've been passing thru some of Verizon's XLTE areas lately where my speeds have topped out at 69/19Mbps. That's pretty darn fast but completely useless for the vast majority of their customers with their piddly 1-10 gig caps.

Re:That's not what we need in the US

[Shatrat]

Look at T-Mobile, Sprint, various MVNOs. If you want one of the Big Two you pay Big Prices.

Re:That's not what we need in the US

[jtownatpunk.net]

Look at their fine print. They all reduce your speed (or cut data completely) after x.x gigs of data. And they throttle certain types of traffic regardless of your usage.

Re:That's not what we need in the US

[Shatrat]

If you want uncapped prices, you pay an uncapped bill.

Re:That's not what we need in the US

[jtownatpunk.net]

Show me one current uncapped option that doesn't have fine print limiting the amount of data you can use or how you use it. Meaning a contract that allows me to tether to my laptop and move hundreds of gigs of data. I have that now but those data plans are no longer available and have been unavailable for 4+ years.

You've just told me to pay for an option that no longer exists.

Re:It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet

[3.5 stripes]

Plus the SNR is so much better when you use proper cables and shielding, and many things besides antennas do a great job of absorbing microwave signals.

Re:Roll out some real 4G first, then we can talk 5

[Noah Haders]

"We're gonna need a bigger boat"

Re:Roll out some real 4G first, then we can talk 5

[dreamchaser]

What does LTE stand for anyway? Lighter Than Earth ? Less Than Europe ? Limited Transfer Environment ?

It stands for 'Long Term Evolution.' Seriously.

Re:It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet

[GNious]

...is consistently faster than our wired home connections.

My VDSL connection (Belgacom) is slower than my 4G-LTE connection (Belgacom).

Nope, nut funny, really.

Re:a THOUSAND times faster than 4G?

[jez9999]

Huh? 10% faster is 1000 times faster? How do those mathematics work?

Re:I thought 4G was 'Superfast'

[ArcadeMan]

We're gonna need plaid cases for our future phones.

Re:5G

[ArcadeMan]

I see what you did th--SPLAT!--

Re:a THOUSAND times faster than 4G?

[RJFerret]

It's lingual, "could be 1000 times faster" includes every portion thereof. Heck, "could be 1000x faster" includes 2000x faster too.

Gotta' watch those conditional possibilities. ;-)

LTE is 4G Lite

[tepples]

It stands for long-term evolution, as dreamchaser pointed out. But compared to how the IMT defined real 4G, it's missing an "i". People who misread 4G LTE as "4G Lite" are right.

Re: YAAAAWN

[Sable Drakon]

Subscribe to T-Mobile then.

Re:It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet

[radarskiy]

My upload speed already is faster for LTE than for my cable modem (Oregon, USA). Download is about 1/2.

Sounds like big guvment

[BenSchuarmer]

Why do they hate our freedom? We don't need nothing like that in the USA.

Oh good!

[ilsaloving]

That means we can consume our ridiculously small bandwidth quotas within 30 seconds, rather than than the 2 hours it takes now.

Re:It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet

[Gothmolly]

You clearly live in a city. I can't see my neighbors where I live. No, it's not cheaper to deploy antennae every few hundred meters.

Re:Roll out some real 4G first, then we can talk 5

[Arker]

You missed his point. 4G has a definition, LTE and the other junk being sold as 4g does not make it. Marketing, as marketing normally does, simply lied and mislabeled what they actually had (improved 3g) as what people wanted to buy (4g) and made the sale anyway.

So now we are talking about 5g or 6g but we do not actually have 4g availability yet.

Re:It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

> tech capital of the world

Wrong. Seattle continues to elect CONservatives to rule over them. Even the person who claims to be a socialist voted against raising the minimum wage. When you live in a place where even the socialist party hates workers and actively fights to see that they starve, and starve we will because of rising rents, then you know you live in a conservative hellhole. Also, they are very anti-technology and anti-Internet like the rest of their kind. They have never once acted to force Comcast to provide Internet access. Also, they have never made CenturyLink fix their phone wiring. Thousands of households don't even have access to DSL. At home I have 1 Mbps, and it works most nights after about 9pm. In the middle of the day, it never works at any speed, and it costs me nealry $70/month. I still pay it because it is the only option we have here in Seattle. The rulers here are hard-core conservative.

Re:Roll out some real 4G first, then we can talk 5

[Shakrai]

Who cares? Seriously.

Verizon Ev-DO: Maximum theoretical speed 3.1mbit/s, typical real world speed: 600-800kbit/s.
Verizon LTE w/10mhz deployment: Maximum theoretical speed: 75mbit/s, typical real world speed: 3-5mbit/s.

24 times the theoretical speed and 4 times the typical real world speed. That's enough to market it as a next generation technology, irrespective of what 3GPP thinks.

Re:It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet

[Joey Vegetables]

Absolutely, in the U.S. where "laws" prevent competition. The results elsewhere will likely be better. Remember basic economics: in a market with enough buyers and sellers that none can exert inordinate influence on prices, those prices will tend toward the marginal cost of production. That doesn't happen here in the U.S. mainly because of regulatory capture - telecom regs are written by the telecom companies and are designed to hinder competition to the greatest extent possible.

5G?

[meglon]

but one South Korean researcher predicts it could be over a thousand times faster than current 4G networks.

Maybe in every other country in the world, but here in the US the companies will buy enough politicians that they can have 5G legally defined as somewhere between 3G and where 4G is supposed to be.

Re:5G?

[wytcld]

If we but allow the several remaining cell phone companies to merge, the efficiency of scale will enable them to bring us infinite, affordable bandwidth. It is only our law against monopolies that prevents OUCH (One Ultra Cell Honcho) from delivering everthing we deserve.

Re:It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet

[MachineShedFred]

Don't forget that the link speed between your phone and the tower doesn't make one single shit of difference if they don't upgrade the backhaul from the tower to the switching office.

Re:a THOUSAND times faster than 4G?

[sandertje]

The problem you US folks have in one problem that's going to plague in many areas for decades to come: low population density. Even your cities are empty by Western European or Asian standards. The cost per capita to deliver services will thus be far higher than in other parts of the world.

Re:It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet

[phorm]

My wireless at home offers speeds in excess of a standard 10/100 connection.
*however*

In most places you will have multiple cabled 10/100 connections, with a backplane that's capable of an aggregate >100MBps. The wifi, on the other handle, gets slower as more people pile on.

I'd imagine that the same applies to cellular wifi VS gigabit etc. I've also noticed that while cellular often has fast download speeds, the connection setup is often much slower than on ethernet etc

Data Limits

[NoKaOi]

Cool, so I can blow through my 2GB in a matter of seconds!

Re:a THOUSAND times faster than 4G?

[dkf]

It's lingual, "could be 1000 times faster" includes every portion thereof. Heck, "could be 1000x faster" includes 2000x faster too.

I always preferred the phrasing "up to 1000 times faster, or more!" Totally devoid of meaning.

Re:It's gonna be funny when our cellphone Internet

[RivenAleem]

My 4G internet on my phone is already faster than my home broadband connection, due to the fact that they haven't connected my street to the rest of the Fiber network in Dublin. Thanks to unlimited download, I regularly use it to downloads my Steam games and TV episodes. I'm tempted to get rid of the landline altogether.

Re:YAAAAWN

[RivenAleem]

This article is about EU and South Korea, where we already have unlimited 4G available on multiple networks.