Sabrina Polin: 4g versus 5g. What's the
difference? With the Internet of Things and other
network devices demanding faster and more reliable
connectivity, combined with exponential data
growth, 4g technology simply isn't enough. That's
where we turn to 5g Technologies. The primary
differences in 4g and 5g come down to latency,
download speeds, base stations, cell density, OFDM
encoding and virtualization. The biggest
difference between the two is latency or the delay
between commands and responses. 5g promises
latency under one millisecond, While, 4g latency
ranges from 60 to 98 milliseconds. And with lower
latency also comes faster potential download
speeds. 4g maxes out at one gigabits per second,
while 5g aims for up to 10 gigabits per second,
that's 10 times faster. Another key difference are
base stations, aka signal transmission. 4g, like
its predecessors transmit signals, primarily from
large cell towers. 5g uses small cell technology
in order to deliver the speeds that promises small
cells about the size of a pizza box will deliver
high frequencies but have a smaller range, so they
must be deployed more densely than cell towers,
experts estimate there will be five to 10 times
more small cells than cell towers. Because 5g
networks will be denser, they can support more
users and more types of devices, meaning faster
speeds with greater connection capacity. Both 4g
and 5g use OFDM a encoding which splits different
wireless signals into separate channels, but they
use different channels 4g the 20 megahertz ch
nnels in 5g the 100 megahertz to 800 megahertz ch
nnels. Because of 5g is larger channels, th
re's less signal interference and more capacity to
boost things like download speeds. Vi
tualization is also an opportunity with 5g. Al
hough LTE, a standard 4g technology offered so
tware systems and services to support more de
ices, virtualization will enable operators to de
loy more software driven networks for af
ordability and flexibility and lead the path to n
twork slicing. 5g promises bold advancements and i
provements over 4g, but that reality might be a w
ys away. In the meantime, click on the link a
ove or in the description box below for a g
ossary of 5g keywords that you should know. How d
you hope 5g will impact your business o
erations? Share your thoughts in the comments a
d be sure to hit that like button too!