5G comms are coming — faster than you think

5G mobile communications are less than five years away, and the ACMA wants to make sure we’re all ready for them.

It has become a truism in recent decades that a new generation of mobile communications has come along every 10 years or so. The current state of the art is 4G, or LTE. But the next step, 5G, is racing towards us, with the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMNA) aiming to have it operational by 2020.

According to the NGMNA, 5G networks will provide services far beyond those offered by 4G, and specifically will need to meet the following requirements:

• Data rates of tens of megabits per second for tens of thousands of users.
• 1 gigabit per second available simultaneously to many workers on the same office floor.
• Several hundreds of thousands of simultaneous connections to be supported for massive sensor deployments.
• Spectral efficiency should be significantly enhanced compared to 4G.
• Coverage should be improved over that provided by 4G.
• Signalling efficiency should be enhanced.
• Latency should be reduced significantly compared to LTE.

There are many technological developments in the pipeline that will work together to achieve these goals, including massive MIMO, cognitive (or smart) radio and network virtualisation, to name just a few.

In February, ACMA released a discussion paper — 5G and mobile network developments: Emerging issues (acma.gov.au/theacma/5g-and-mobile-network-developments-emerging-issues-occasional-paper) — that “looks at 5G mobile developments and the opportunities that this evolution in mobile technology offers to the Australian community through increased use of mobile broadband and machine-to-machine communication”.

The paper examines:

• the ongoing development of mobile networks in Australia;
• expected consumer and business drivers of demand for the next generation of mobile services;
• the technological developments that will underpin 5G network deployments;
• use cases that will require 5G in order to be deployed;
• the existing regulatory arrangements that may be useful in facilitating the next stage of mobile network developments.

The ACMA has called for input into the discussion, and has posed the following questions to industry and the wider community:

• Are there any additional demand drivers supporting 5G network deployment in Australia not identified in the paper?
• Are there any additional significant enablers or major inhibitors to 5G network deployment in Australia that are not identified in this paper?
• Are there additional regulatory issues around 5G network deployment, relevant to the ACMA’s responsibilities, which are not discussed in this paper?

Public-private partnership

At the Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, the European Commission and the 5G Infrastructure Association launched a 5G Public-Private Partnership white paper, 5G Empowering Vertical Industries, which outlines how 5G network infrastructures will enable the digitalisation of society and economy, leading to the fourth industrial revolution, especially in the automotive, transportation, healthcare, energy, manufacturing as well as media and entertainment sectors.

The white paper depicts use cases from the most important vertical sectors and details how the resulting requirements will shape the 5G system design. Among its main conclusions are:

• 5G will transform networks into intelligent orchestration platforms and pave the way for new business models and value propositions by cementing strong relationships between vendors, operators and verticals.
• 5G will also integrate seamlessly different enabling technologies (eg, mobile, fixed, satellite and optical).
• Latency (below 5 ms), reliability (5 nines and beyond), density (up to 100 devices/m²) and peak terminal data rates are among the most important performance targets 5G needs to achieve, along with tight constraints on territorial and population coverage.
• Requirements derived from use cases for vertical markets should be considered with high priority and covered in the early phases of the 5G standardisation process.
• Vertical use cases should be duly considered when identifying spectrum priorities.

Australian trials

In February, Optus and equipment vendor Huawei completed a live trial of 4.5G wireless networking technology, achieving peak data rates of 1.23 Gbps over the air in live network conditions. Huawei is developing 4.5G technology as a stopgap between 4G and 5G.

During the field trial in Newcastle, the company also achieved download speeds of 1.41 Gbps in a cabled scenario.

The tests involved combining technologies including carrier aggregation — which involves combining spectrum from multiple frequency bands — and 4x4 multiple input multiple output (MIMO), the next evolution of the technology involving using multiple antennas to transmit and receive wireless data.

The companies aggregated five 20 MHz spectrum carriers for the trial. Current commercial LTE-Advanced networks typically only aggregate two or three carriers.

Dennis Wong, Optus Networks acting managing director, said the trial forms part of Optus’s preparations for the arrival of 5G technology, which is expected to deliver data rates in the 10 Gbps range.

Telstra is also looking to lay the groundwork for 5G. The company has announced that it plans to work with Ericsson to trial 5G technologies at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast. The company announced ahead of the Mobile World Congress trade show that it plans to start testing 5G technologies in Australia this year ahead of the trial at the Games.

Recent trials of 5G with Ericsson in Sweden achieved speeds of more than 11 Gbps in real-world indoor settings.

Image courtesy ITU.