How 5G will shove a supercharged network to your phone, home, car

The next evolution in wireless networking holds promises of self-driving cars and movies that download in the blink of an eye. 5G is big at this year’s Mobile World Congress, but don’t expect it until 2020.

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Five years from now, you may be thanking your dog for helping to make you healthier, safer, more productive and smarter about what’s happening in the world around you.

And it has nothing to do with taking Scruffy on long walks.

Instead, it has to do with quicker, more powerful wireless networks. Today, the networks that drive our smartphones and Internet-connected devices are mostly based on 4G technology. But higher-performance fifth-generation technology, called 5G, is coming, and it promises to take us places we’ve never been before.

Here’s where your dog comes in. 5G is considered key to the Internet of Things (IoT), the name given to the notion of tying just about every and any thing into the Net. Billions of sensors will be built into appliances, security systems, health monitors, door locks, cars and wearables — from smartwatches to dog collars. Analyst rock hard Gartner predicts the number of networked devices will skyrocket from about five billion in two thousand fifteen to twenty five billion by 2020.

All those sensors producing mountains of data should, in turn, spur carriers to spend billions upgrading their networks for 5G so they can cash in on your enhanced appetite for IoT data — including updates to your smartphone on what Scruffy is up to across the day.

“You’ll have tags on your dogs talking to devices in your home,” says Femi Adeyemi, lead mobile architect for Fujitsu. “You’ll know when your children come home. Cars on the highway will be autonomously managed.”

Plus, 5G networks will be about sixty six times quicker than 4G. That speed opens up intriguing fresh capabilities. Self-driving cars can make time-critical decisions. Movie talks will make us feel like we’re all in the same room. And cities can monitor traffic congestion, pollution levels and parking request — and then feed that information to your clever car in real time.

Reasons to be hungry for 5G

Expect slew of benefits from the next-gen network.

• Fresh realities: 5G will shove augmented reality and virtual reality into the mainstream. Augmented reality overlays information like walking directions, product prices or acquaintances’ names over our view of the real world by, for example, projecting data onto a car windshield. Virtual reality creates an entirely artificial view. Both need to pull in fresh data almost instantly.
• Instant gratification: Download speeds should increase from today’s 4G peak of one hundred fifty megabits per 2nd to at least ten gigabits per 2nd. That’s quick enough to download “Guardians of the Galaxy” in four seconds instead of six minutes.
• Lightning-fast response: In addition to cramming more bits into every 2nd, 5G will shorten the lag time before the very first bits showcase up. Waiting a few seconds for a streaming movie to commence over 4G is no big deal, but that’s unacceptably slow for things like self-driving cars, where every millisecond counts. 4G ideally needs fifteen to twenty five milliseconds for one car to tell another behind it that it’s begun emergency braking. That delay will drop to one millisecond with 5G.

It ain’t effortless

The wireless industry is fixated on delivering the very first 5G networks by 2020. AT&T and Nokia Networks say the schedule is reasonable.

Craig Wigginton, leader of the telecom practice at consulting hard Deloitte & Touche, thinks two thousand twenty two is more realistic. And Tod Sizer, head of wireless research at Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Laboratories, doesn’t expect widespread availability until 2025.

5G networks will transfer data much swifter than today’s 3G and 4G, handy for streaming movie and instant app updates. CNET

Whatever the date, 5G is coming.

To supply 5G, carriers will need to boost network capacity inbetween phones and the big antennas, called base stations, they install every few miles.

They can begin by tapping into unoccupied spectrum — radio-wave territory relatively uncluttered with signals today. Radio sways stimulate with a frequency measured in megahertz or even swifter gigahertz. Today’s phones communicate at less than 3GHz; 5G will require higher frequency bands.

But radio swings at higher frequencies are firmer to transmit over longer distances or if buildings and walls are in the way. To compensate, carriers will rely on advanced antenna technologies. These include massive MIMO (numerous input numerous output) antennas, which send many radio signals in parallel, and beamforming, which concentrates radio energy in a specific direction.

Carriers will also pack base stations more closely together to improve the odds your phone will be near one. They will also supplement today’s long-range “macrocells,” which can reach up to about twenty miles, with lots of short-range “puny cells,” which can cover up to a few hundred feet.

Installing one macrocell and getting it running costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, while mounting puny cells every block on power poles costs ems of thousands of dollars apiece, Fujitsu’s Adeyemi says.

It’s too soon to say how much 5G will cost, but carriers’ ongoing 4G build-out may total $1.7 trillion through 2020, says Dan Warren, senior technologist for the GSMA mobile industry group. Carriers won’t foot the 5G bill without the prospect of lots of fresh paying customers.

IoT should produce those customers. The market will hit $Three.04 trillion by 2020, says researcher IDC. Network-equipment maker Cisco Systems, which has a vested interest in IoT’s success, predicts the market will be worth $Nineteen trillion over the next decade.

Smarten up

People joke about Internet-connected refrigerators, but the idea isn’t marketing puffery.

Google’s Nest thermostats and Net-connected smoke detectors are already making homes smarter. Automakers are developing connected cars with seat-back movie and self-driving safety features. Fitness bands, sleep monitors and smartwatches will soon combine data gathered about your vital signs, including breathing rate, heart rate and temperature. That holistic view could keep us healthier longer and even warn us of an imminent heart attack or stroke. Cities, already getting smarter, could become downright brainiacs. Barcelona, Spain, uses more than a million sensors to monitor traffic, pollution, noise, parking, water pressure, weather and electrical play.

In Nice, France, more than two hundred sensors have been installed on streetlights, in the roadway and on garbage bins. They collect data on traffic flow, public lighting, parking, waste and pollution in the city’s center.

While carriers’ base stations can treat hundreds of simultaneous users now, that’s not enough to accommodate the billions of fresh devices that will hook into the Internet of Things. Equipment makers must increase base station connectivity capacity by a factor of 1,000, says Bell Labs’ Sizer. “My research team ran the numbers. This isn’t that crazy.”

It’ll be a different world. And maybe when it’s lighter to find Scruffy after he gets lost at the dog park, he’ll be able to thank you for it, too.

Editors’ note: This story emerges in the Spring two thousand fifteen issue CNET Magazine.

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