Telecom World is buzzing with the word 5G. But why do we need 5G? How will 5g shape our
digital future by satisfying the customer needs or demands? What are the key requirements
and challenges of 5G? Which key technologies will help overcome those challenges? How will
5g revolutionize smart cities, health care and industry 4.0?
Hello friends, welcome back to the world of LTE, previously in the history series, we
have talked about how development happened in the telecommunication world over the generations.
Today we are going to talk about the near future of telecom world i.e. 5G.
In 2020 a tiny thing shook the whole world. SarsCovid-19 travelled the whole world and
restricted the movement of people. From the European Space Agency’s operations to small
businesses almost everything started operating remotely. Like Water and Electricity, the
internet also became a basic utility. The world took a giant leap towards dependence
on the internet. But, According to Moore’s law, the number
of transistors in a dense integrated circuit, doubles about every two years, which leads
to saturation at some point. Similarly, in mobile telecommunication, by the end of the
4th Generation, we are already at the peak of high data rates using the existing spectrum.
But customer demand is increasing day by day, So what are the new ways of satisfying the
ever-increasing customer demand? In the world of Telecommunication Spectral
efficiency plays the most crucial role. The spectral efficiency is bits per second per
hertz. Now, the telecom operators get spectrum from the government on lease and the operator
provides the services over this spectrum. So spectrum efficiency reflects how efficiently
the operator is utilizing the spectrum, in other words, how many bits can be transmitted
per second over a particular radio-frequency. In 4G the operation happens in different frequencies
ranges starting from 450Mhz to up to 3.8GHz and in different modes. But, As mentioned
we are already at peak of data rate in existing spectrum, So, the operators need alternate
ways to fulfil customer demand and also to increase the spectral efficiency.
The radio of 5G operates in 2 frequency ranges, The Frequency Range 1 is below 6Ghz and plans
to reuse radio frequencies from other generations including 4G. This will also help Telecom
Operators to transition gradually. The Frequency Range 2 is in 24-100GHz range which is popularly
called as millimeter Waves. This frequency range will help scale up to accommodate high
b/w requirements for services like download of big files or high quality streaming or
real-time gaming. And the effective utilization of both frequency
ranges will help accommodate the massive Tsunami of IoT devices.
And, to implement it, a new upgraded Radio was required.
The Radio part of 5g is called New Radio or Radio Access Technology Beyond LTE. International
Telecommunication Union-Radio, ITU-R , the governing body, set the IMT 2020 which are
the standards and requirements for the Fifth Generation networks, services and the devices.
Some key requirements of the new radio are, Peak Throughput from 100Mbps to 20Gbps, Latency
of 30-50ms to 1-4ms, Mobility of 350kmph to 500Kmph, Connection density of 10 thousand
devices to 1 million devices per sqKm Peak Spectral Efficiency of 15bits/s/Hz to 30bit/s/Hz
in DL and 3.75bits/s/Hz to 15bits/s/Hz in UL
But how will these features be realized? Well for that we need to understand the various
technologies that drive the fifth generation of mobile communication and enables the efficient
usage of the spectrum. A wireless channel faces several complexities
such as multipath fading caused due to multiple paths taken by a wireless signal to reach
a user, which leads to extension of symbol duration thus giving rise to delay spread.
And Also inter channel interference where adjacent carrier frequencies overlap with
each other. You can click on the i here to find our videos on OFDMA showing how these
are mitigated. The millimetre-wave used in the New Radio
opens up a new world of opportunities in 5G. In our video on MIMO we have talked about
dynamic beam forming and massive MIMO. But Massive MIMO is only possible for very high
frequency. Because as frequency increases, wavelength decreases and the size of the antenna
decreases. Thus enabling the usage of multiple antennas in small devices and enabling advanced
beam forming. Now the easiest way to increase the datarate
is to increase the bandwidth. However large chunk of bandwidth is not always available
for use. Also in countries with large number of operators spectrum allocation is often
fragmented. Carrier aggregation is the technology that enables frequencies from different bands
to be clubbed together, to expand the total bandwidth.
The above technologies perform good in good coverage. But often the performance of cellular
network degrades at the cell edges. We have seen in one of our previous video that Coordinated
multipoint enhances the overall system performance through dynamic coordination among multiple
geographically separated eNodeBs, or cells from same eNodeBs for transmission and reception.
Basically, Co-ordinated Multipoint enables one device to be served by two different entry
point. And also enables a service provider to improve cell edge coverage which will be
very crucial for smart cities. Smartcities will also have a massive number
of Intelligent devices relying upon massive machine to machine communication which might
congest the network. So, a heterogenous network consisting of macro, small, micro, pico and
femto cells can help reduce the congestion. Also, for them good cellular coverage is very
important. So relay nodes without a wired backhaul may help fill coverage holes which
will enable a smooth mobile network for the New Radio of 5G.
All these technologies has been around us for some time, and we can say 5G is an umbrella
under which all these technologies converge. These technologies that we discussed so far,
will transform the radio side. However, to unlock the true potential a new radio will
require an upgraded core. So, other than these, IMT-2020 has other general
requirements, mostly associated with the core network, like
It should be able to support diversity of services. For example a person binging on
Netflix has different traffic requirements than a sensor based IoT device and the network
should be flexible to support the diverse requirements.
The core should also be dynamically scalable. By virtualization of, resources associated
with network functions, the core should be able to scale-up or down based on demand.
The core should also be access network agnostic i.e other than the new radio people should
be able to access services through WLAN, Fixed Broadband or other modes as well.
Now, Till fourth generation the core is centralised. To reduce core network or backhaul traffic
a distributed architecture should be adopted. To realize the above requirements and also
to mitigate the multi-vendor interworking and roaming problems, the core network should
automate the processes as far as possible. In addition to these, network optimization
through dynamic data routing, reliability, security, privacy and energy efficiency should
be the key focus of the new core. Keeping these requirements in mind, various
companies and research institutes across the globe such as Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia and
many others have published their own Cloud-based architecture.
To sum up our learnings so far, we have seen that in fifth generation both the radio and
core side is enhanced. Various technologies have been used to
increase the capacity, Reduce the latency,
Increase support to the number of connections improve the edge coverage
And thus making the network more flexible Now, With great power, comes great responsibilities.
These advanced features of 5g opens a world of opportunities for the diverse end users,
ranging from individual users to large enterprises. The use cases can be broadly classified into
three categories eMBB: Enhanced Mobile Broadband for high speed
internet uRLLC: Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication
mMTC: Massive Machine to Machine Type Communication for IoT
Now, In the era of Netflix and a thousand other over the top platforms, watching shows
while travelling has become the new normal. However, streaming of live events such as
football matches or concerts or other events while on the go has been challenging. With
enhanced mobile broadband, and a network that has low latency, highly reliable and mobile,
as in 5g, streaming of live events in High Quality even while travelling is going to
be a reality. These factors are going to revolutionize the
gaming industry as well. Collaborative gaming on the go will become normal.
In 21st century, technologies such as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are already around
us. 5G will make the experience smoother. Also, In the first quarter of twenty-first
century we saw the pandemic. If corona time has taught us one thing, then it's that, when
physical presence becomes a challenge remote schooling or working is possible. Mobile broadband
penetration played a huge role in developing countries like India to have a transition
towards internet based education and remote working. The high data rate, low latency and
mobility of 5G will make cloud platforms the new normal. There are various platforms like
Google Colab or Kaggle which allows cloud computing and collaborative programming. With
a 5g network, Cloud based big data handling and machine learning techniques will take
huge pace. 5g will also be revolutionary in the auto
industry. Enhanced Mobile Broadband and Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication of 5g will
be a key enabler for massive mobile infotainment. A lot of automakers are also working on autonomous
driving, that requires a lot of information processing. 5g will make this processing on
the go a reality. Another use case in auto sector could be connected vehicles where vehicles
in the network are connected to each other. The fast information exchanged between each
other because of low latency may help optimise the traffic and avoid accidents. Also, Vehicles
these days depend a lot on software, which require regular update over the air. Enhanced
Broadband of 5g will enable faster update on the go.
Not only in auto-industries, 5g is going to play a key role in other industries as well
such as agriculture, healthcare, manufacturing etc. For manufacturing, smart factories will
take over traditional production in Industry 4.0. Smart factories will require smart machines,
robots and machine learning for fault detection or demand prediction. 5g will enable massive
machine to machine communication, thus taking us away from the internet of people to the
internet of things. Ultra low latency and enhanced broadband will
help in executing Remote operations. A user can remotely operate devices or even heavy
machineries such as in mines where safety becomes a challenge for human operations.
Or in healthcare emergency, where doctors from hospital or clinic can help a patient
remotely by checking vitals, accessing medical records etc while the patient is being transported
via ambulance. 5g will potentially revolutionize sensor based
IoT applications. Many applications, such as personal health monitoring where smartwatches
are used for monitoring heartbeat or oxygen level; or pollution monitoring in cities where
smart sensors are installed throughout the city, to monitor the concentration of pollutants
like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, sulphurous oxides etc; or for monitoring the condition
of soil and atmosphere such as humidity, pH level and other chemical concentration for
smart farming; low latency, mobility and reliability is very crucial. For most of such applications
higher data rate is not useful, instead scaling down of bandwidth may help, save power and
less utilization of spectrum which means more devices can be accommodated and thus increasing
overall efficiency. In a connected ecosystem the Ultra low latency will help fast processing
of information and action. The massive number of IoT devices accommodated with the help
of 5g will help the humanity move towards a smart ecosystem.
A complete transformation will take time and huge investment, and every operator can not
afford to adopt 5G immediately, that is why the New Radio can operate in two modes-
In Non-Standalone mode existing Control Plane of 4G is used in 5G. The Node of 5G is connected
to master node corresponding to 4G. The control plane messages of 5G will reach the core through
the master eNB but the user plane data will be sent directly to the core. This will enable
easier and faster transition for the existing operator.
The Standalone mode doesn’t depend upon 4G and requires a complete upgrading of Core.
So we have seen in this video how the telecom operators will slowly migrate from 4G to 5G.
We have seen, which are the key technologies that will enable this transition and will
be the driving force behind 5g. We have also seen how the end users can take advantages
from these advancements and move towards a smarter ecosystem.
We appreciate your patience for staying till the end. See you guys in next video. Happy
Learning.