5G

5G (5th generation mobile networks or 5th generation wireless systems) is a name used in some research papers and projects to denote the next major phase of mobile telecommunications standards beyond the upcoming 4G standards (which is expected to be finalized between approximately 2011 and 2013). Currently, 5G is not a term officially used for any particular specification or in any official document yet made public by telecommunication companies or standardization bodies such as 3GPP, WiMAX Forum or ITU-R. New standard releases beyond 4G are in progress by standardization bodies, but are at this time not considered as new mobile generations but under the 4G umbrella.

Prognosis

If a 5G family of standards would be implemented, it would likely be around the year of 2020 according to some sources. A new mobile generation has appeared every 10th year since the first 1G system (NMT) was introduced in 1981, including the 2G (GSM) system that started to roll out in 1992, and 3G (W-CDMA/FOMA), which appeared in 2001. The development of the 2G (GSM) and 3G (IMT-2000 and UMTS) standards took about 10 years from the official start of the R&D projects, and development of 4G systems started in 2001 or 2002. However, still no official 5G development project is launched.

From user point of view, previous mobile generations have implied substantial increase in peak bitrate (i.e. physical layer net bitrates for short-distance communication). However, no source suggests 5G peak download and upload rates of more than the 1 Gbps to be offered by ITU-R's definition of 4G systems. If 5G will come true and reflect these prognoses, the major difference from user point of view between 4G and 5G techniques must be something else than increased maximum throughput, for example lower battery consumption, lower outage probability (better coverage), high bit rates in larger portions of the coverage area, cheaper or no traffic fees due to low infrastructure deployment costs, or higher aggregate capacity for many simultaneous users (i.e. higher system level spectral efficiency).

In the first release LTE pre-4G standard, the peak physical layer net bit rate is 100 Mbit/s, the maximum throughput at short distance and low velocity is about 80 Mbit/s, and the average throughput much lower due to link adaptation and poor signal-to-noise and interference ratio in large portions of the cell. The throughput experienced by a single user would be even lower in a high traffic load situation. In previous generations, the throughput averaged over the whole coverage area, and the system spectral efficiency, have historically been around 20-50% of peak performance levels.

The development of the peak bit rates offered by cellular systems is hard to predict, since the historical bit rate development has shown very little resemblance with a simple exponential function of time (as opposed to for example Moore's law for computing capacity). The data rate increased by a factor 8 from 1G (NMT 1.2 kbps) to 2G (GSM 9.6 kbps). The peak bit rate increased by a factor 40 from 2G to 3G for mobile users (384 kbps), and by a factor of 200 from 2G to 3G for stationary users (2 Mbps). The peak bit rates are expected to increase by a factor 260 from 3G to 4G for mobile users (100 Mbps) and by a factor 500 from 3G to 4G for stationary users (1 Gbps).

Research

Key concepts suggested in scientific papers discussing 5G and beyond 4G wireless communications are:

• Pervasive networks providing ubiquitous computing: The user can simultaneously be connected to several wireless access technologies and seamlessly move between them (See Media independent handover or vertical handover, IEEE 802.21, also expected to be provided by future 4G releases. See also multihoming.). These access technologies can be 2.5G, 3G, 4G, or 5G mobile networks, Wi-Fi, WPAN, or any other future access technology. In 5G, the concept may be further developed into multiple concurrent data transfer paths.
• Group cooperative relay: A major issue in beyond 4G systems is to make the high bit rates available in a larger portion of the cell, especially to users in an exposed position in between several base stations. In current research, this issue is addressed by cellular repeaters and macro-diversity techniques, also known as group cooperative relay, as well as by beam division multiple access.
• Cognitive radio technology, also known as smart-radio: allowing different radio technologies to share the same spectrum efficiently by adaptively finding unused spectrum and adapting the transmission scheme to the requirements of the technologies currently sharing the spectrum. This dynamic radio resource management is achieved in a distributed fashion, and relies on software defined radio. See also the IEEE 802.22 standard for Wireless Regional Area Networks.
• Dynamic Adhoc Wireless Networks (DAWN), essentially identical to Mobile ad hoc network (MANET), Wireless mesh network (WMN) or Wireless grids, combined with smart antennas and flexible modulation.
• Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6), where a visiting care-of mobile IP address is assigned according to location and connected network.
• High altitude stratospheric platform station (HAPS) systems.
• Wearable devices with AI capabilities.
• One unified global standard.
• Real wireless world with no more limitation with access and zone issues.

• User centric network concept instead of operator-centric (as in 3G) or service-centric (as in 4G)
• World wide wireless web (WWWW), i.e. comprehensive wireless based web applications that include full multimedia capability beyond 4G speeds.

News

• On July 7, 2008, South Korea announced plans to spend 60 billion won, or US$58,000,000, on developing 4G and even 5G technologies, with the goal of having the highest mobile phone market share by 2012, and the hope of an international standard.

See also

• Femtocell
• Picocell
• Ultra-wideband (UWB)
• Web 2.0
• Web 3.0