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Samsung Achieves Outdoor 5G Mobile Broadband Speed of 7.5Gbps
Mark.JUK writes: Samsung has become the first to successfully demonstrate a future 5G mobile network running at speeds of 7.5Gbps in a stationary outdoor environment. They also managed 1.2Gbps while using the same technology and driving around a 4.3km-long race track at speeds of up to 110kph.
Crucially, the test was run using the 28GHz radio spectrum band, which ordinarily wouldn't be much good for mobile networks where wide coverage and wall penetration is an important requirement. But Samsung claims it can mitigate at least some of that by harnessing the latest Hybrid Adaptive Array Technology (HAAT), which uses millimeter wave frequency bands to enable the use of higher frequencies over greater distances. Several companies are competing to develop the first 5G technologies, although consumers aren't expected to see related services until 2020 at the earliest.
Crucially, the test was run using the 28GHz radio spectrum band, which ordinarily wouldn't be much good for mobile networks where wide coverage and wall penetration is an important requirement. But Samsung claims it can mitigate at least some of that by harnessing the latest Hybrid Adaptive Array Technology (HAAT), which uses millimeter wave frequency bands to enable the use of higher frequencies over greater distances. Several companies are competing to develop the first 5G technologies, although consumers aren't expected to see related services until 2020 at the earliest.
That's measured in gigabytes. It'd actually take you 40 seconds.
LTE is not done and is continuing its evolution. To give a rough idea recent products are LTE "release 10" (R10), and standard work will start in a few months on R13 that will not cover anything 5G yet. R13 should arrive in the field in ~2017. This Samsung demo is not a standard yet, it's more a technology evaluation / advanced work that will only land in real products in a few years.
It's likely that a real production 5G will come from within 3GPP, the organization that standardize 2G/3G/4G. At every big transition some people try to go for it with a completely different standard (for 4G: Qualcom UMD, WiMAX) and it may not be different with 5G, but it would be very unlikely to succeed IMHO. The technology demonstrated here is not universal: it can only work in very dense area. Which is fine, that's also where we need added capacity. But it means that whereas in time LTE can fully replace 2G and 3G, 5G will be designed to coexist with 4G and will never replace it. At best, you'll have LTE in low-density areas, and 5G in dense areas. And even in dense areas there may be a 4G coverage umbrella to provide service continuity.
There's a lot of hype and BS in wireless, so take all throughput / generation targets with a big grain of salt... LTE Advanced defines a "category 8" that goes up to 3 Gbps for example, but it's a joke to get the IMT 4G stamp. Already the initial LTE defined a category 5 that no product ever implemented. It was just there to match the WiMAX 2 peak target rate. It was bollocks and unpractical and nobody cared once WiMAX 2 died. Similarly, the people at IMT got over-excited and stuck in a hype loop, and defined real 4G has the ability to support 1 Gbps. It was nonsense at the time and still above what's practical. So what did LTE-A did? It introduced realistic new categories 6 and 7 with 300 Mbps down, and a BS category 8 at 3 Gbps. So on paper LTE-A is 4G, because of a category 8 that nobody will implement anytime soon if ever. I've seen pedants saying LTE is no real 4G but LTE-A is because only LTE-A makes the 1 Gbps IMT target: what a joke!
The high rates of 5G as demoed by Samsung use a very different approach. Much higher frequency allowing larger channels and data rates. Also the size of the antennas shrinks with a higher frequency, so it becomes possible to use many small antennas in a device. Each receive path is quite poor compared to LTE to keep the cost down, but it's compensated by a lot of them. These many antennas are not used for massive spatial multiplexing (SM) MIMO, which would be too computationally expensive, but for a few SM layers as today and beamforming as beamforming is cheap. It's a bit early to say it will work well in real life, but it looks promising and worth pursuing.