5G is a wireless technology that is currently gaining popularity within the telecommunication sector and major industries such as automotive and satellite services for its superior network quality as compared to 4G-LTE. With the advent of internet of things (IOT), it has become possible to connect household devices and equipments in industries over the internet and even establishing connections between cars on roads for a self driving experience. These objectives cannot be achieved with the current 4G network system due to its high latency, low strength, low data rates, low reliability, low bandwidth and inability to connect to more number of devices in a given area. Apart from the connectivity hurdles, the other aspects involved in the path of fulfilling these objectives includes computational delays, energy inefficiency and security concerns all of which can easily be overcomed by adopting 5G network technology. 5G technology also have the potential to enable smooth functioning of other novel technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality games, realtime industry feedbacks and operations, digital healthcare, robotic telesurgery and remote consultations.

There’s a dire need for the government across the globe to realize the potential of these technologies previously underestimated as claimed by Paul Timmers from University of Oxford. The global technology community and industry consortia thus need to come forward to initiate global standards and avoid geographical fragmentation of it. Formally, 5G is standardized by 3rd Generation partnership project (3GPP), an industry led body into which participation is allowed to only major established players such as network equipment manufacturers and service providers.

Source: 9to5mac.com

History

Though 5G is new and differs from all other previous wireless technologies, the underlining technology involving transmission of information through radio waves remains the same. It was in the year around 1980 when the first generation (1G) network was established that relied on analogous signals and was limited to only voice calls. The second generation (2G) network offered digital capability and enabled instant messaging along with the voice calls in the year around 1990s. The 3G which emerged in the year 2000s further improved connectivity with the provision for accessing internet and email services. It was finally followed by 4G in the year 2010 with the major focus on high data exchange rates, video streaming and calls. Recently in case of 5G network, the frameworks and standards though are prepared and deployed in many cities in US, further innovations are required from the component to the system level for exploiting its full potential as suggested by Vida Ilderem of Intel Labs.

Components in 5G infrastructure

The infrastructure of 5G is inherently heterogeneous with its design supporting both 3GPP and non-3GPP devices and technologies. Here the 3GPP devices imply those that are built by the telephone equipment manufacturers and mounted on traditional base stations. Non-3GPP technologies include the wireless broadband technologies such as Wifi. The heterogeneity in 5G can already be witnessed in the current generation of 4G where the features offered by the 3GPP as compared to the non-3GPP are costly in their deployment and maintenance but far more reaching. The 3GPP technology suffers from the slow pace in their development as compared to the WiFi (that is based on IEEE 802.11 standards and outside the remit of 3GPP standards).

WiFi: The future 5G infrastructure is certain to adopt WiFi as its major traffic carrier where the heterogeneous network (HetNets) system comprising of Wifi and 5G will be based on multipath transmission control protocol. The management of the HetNets will be done employing network coding on the transport layer to provide delay gains by considering data streams with different delays, reliabilities and throughputs. Also the Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing technique usually employed today in Wifi can merge multiple channels or carriers with different characteristics and performance into a single bandwidth.

Wireless Mesh Connectivity: Future 5G infrastructure will be based on wireless mesh connections in contrast to the currently employed local wireline network that now seems to be getting a lot congested and limiting the idea of obtaining unlimited bandwidths. With the current deployment of massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technology (directional antennas), a wirelessly self communicating base station design powered by high frequency carrier wave (or the millimetre wave) have been possible. This would eliminate the hurdles faced in the wired infrastructures and reduce cost of deployment in large numbers as are required in case of 5G networks.

Machine learning (ML): ML could be another major leap in the networking management of 5G mobile communication by acquiring information on the availability of the bandwidth at a particular location along with the bandwidth needed by any user (instead of assigning a fixed bandwidth to the user) and then learning in the process for a fine-tuned and dynamic distribution. ML has also been considered by International Telecommunication Union for standardization.

Lastly, replacement of spectrum with storage by Fog (or the part of the network close to the end user) is another aspect in the infrastructure of 5G that will provide cache storage for contents often used by users or while in high demand.

Three classes of 5G communication services

5G relies on a wide range of frequency band spectra each needed for different purpose, requiring efficient utilization of the existing spectra and exploring previously unused spectra. Three of the major classes of communication services in 5G, based on their utilization of frequency bands include enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive Machine Type Communication (eMTC) and Ultra reliable low latency communication (URLLC).

eMBB: It requires high data rates (ranging in 10GBps), capacity (ranging in 10 Tbps per sq. Km.) and high frequency band (<6GHz) for their service. In order to make these features possible, eMBB adopts mMIMO solutions for beam management and optimization which enhances the user throughput and capacity.

eMTC; It needs to cover a larger area of operation (around 1 million nodes per sq. Km.) with multiple connected devices as a result of which it adheres to low data rates (around 10kbps), low power, optimal utilization (to enhance the battery life of the devices connected) and low frequency band (around <3GHz). eMTC employs protocols such as Wifi, Bluetooth and Zigbee for short range, LORA for long range and low power and 5G NR for latency sensitive applications. For energy efficiency, eMTC employs Wake-up radio which enables trade-off between computation and communication at the nodes by waking up the main radio in the targeted device when communication is established.

URLLC: It needs to be highly reliable (99.999%) to be used for real time devices, mission critical functions and applications with the least latency of the order of 1ms or even less than that and requires high frequency band (<6GHz) (or in some cases millimetre band). Due to the involvement of complex network system comprising of computations, artificial intelligence and communication, URLLC generally employs edge networking which is a coalescence of these technology.

Health concerns in 5G

5G utilizes millimetre frequency band spectra, the frequencies that are higher than most of the currently deployed networks or 4G. This means we will be surrounded with relatively higher energy electromagnetic waves that seem to be concerning for a number of healthcare researchers and scientists. The research studies carried out by Professor Andrew Wood and his team on the absorption effect of 5G radiation by living tissues and its modelling forms the basis of the health risk assessment studies in this field. Though the information regarding health issues from 5G are fewer due to unavailability of long term exposure data, Professor Andrew pointed out that with the significantly low power level requirement for mobile telecommunications, the concerns could be at most limited to temperature rise in the tissue by few tenths of a degree. Other health issues from high energy radiations such as cancer remains controversial and cannot be opinionated without having proper evidence of the long term exposure effect of 5G though few studies have been carried out on animals. Also with higher frequency radiations, the penetration depth in body tissues reduces due to scattering effect and chances of body organs like heart, lungs, etc being affected declines.

References

• High five: The 5G is our 2020 technology of the year
• Vida Ilderem (2020) The technology underpinning 5G, Nature Electronics, 3
• Muriel Medard (2020) Is 5 just what comes after 4? Nature Electronics, 3.
• Nature Research, Advertisement feature.