Hello
My name is Muhammad Hasnain I belong to Pakistan.every new generation of wireless networks delivers faster speeds and more
functionality to our smartphones 1g brought us the very first cell phones 2g
let us text for the first time 3G brought us online and 4g delivered the speeds
that we enjoy today but as more users come online 4G networks have just about
reached the limit of what they're capable of at a time when users want even
more data for their smartphones and devices now we're headed toward 5g the next
generation of wireless it will be able to handle a thousand times more traffic
then today's networks and it'll be up to 10 times faster than 4G LTE just
imagine downloading an HD movie in under a second and then let your imagination
run wild 5g will be the foundation for virtual reality autonomous driving the
Internet of Things and stuff we can't even yet imagine but what exactly is a 5g
network the truth is experts can't tell us what 5g is because they don't even
know yet but right now there are 5 brand new technologies emerging as a foundation of 5g
millimeter waves small cells massive MIMO beamforming and full-duplex first up
technology number one millimeter waves your smartphone and other electronic
devices in your home use very specific frequencies on the radio frequency spectrum
typically those under 6 gigahertz but these frequencies are starting to get
more crowded carriers can only squeeze so many bits of data into the same amount
of the radiofrequency spectrum as more devices come online we're going to start to
see slower service and more dropped connections the solution is to open up some
new real estate so researchers are experimenting with broadcasting on shorter
millimeter waves those that fall between 30 and 300 gigahertz this section of
spectrum has never been used before for mobile devices and opening it up means
more bandwidth for everyone but there is a catch millimeter-wave can't travel
well through buildings or other obstacles and they tend to be absorbed by
plants and rain to get around this problem we'll need technology number 2 small
cell networks today's wireless networks rely on large high powered cell towers to broadcast their signals over long distances but remember higher-frequency millimeter waves have a harder time traveling through obstacles which means if you move behind the one you lose your signal small cell networks would solve that problem using thousands of low-power mini base stations these base stations would be much closer together than traditional towers forming a sort of relay team to transmit signals around obstacles this would be especially useful in cities as the user moved
behind an obstacle, his smartphone would automatically switch to a new base station in better range of his device allowing him to keep his connection next up technology number three massive MIMO my most stands for multiple-input multiple-output today's 4g base stations have about a dozen ports for antennas that handle all cellular traffic but massive MIMO base stations can support about a hundred ports this could increase the capacity of today's networks by a factor of 22 or more of course massive MIMO comes with its own complications today's cellular antennas broadcast information in every direction at once and all of those crossing signals could cause serious interference which brings us to technology number 4 beam farming beamforming is like a traffic signaling system for cellular signals instead of broadcasting in every direction it would allow a base station to send a focus stream of data to a specific user this precision prevents interference and it's way more efficient that means stations could handle more incoming and outgoing data streams at once here's how it works say you're in a the cluster of buildings and you're trying to make a phone call your signal is ricocheting off of surrounding buildings and crisscrossing with other signals from users in the area a massive MIMO the base station receives all of these signals and keeps track of the timing and the direction of their arrival it then uses signal processing algorithms to triangulate exactly where each signal is coming from and plots the best transmission route back through the air to each phone sometimes it'll even bounce individual packets of data in different directions off of buildings or other objects to keep signals from interfering with each other the result is a coherent data stream sent only to you which brings us to technology number 5 full-duplex if you've ever used a wall Pataki, you know that to communicate you have to take turns talking and listening that's kind of a drag.
today's cellular base stations have that the same hold up a basic antenna can only do one job at a time either transmit or receive this is because of a principle called reciprocity which is the tendency for radio waves to travel both forward and backward along with the same frequency tounderstand this it helps to think of a wave-like train loaded up with data the frequency it's traveling on is like the train track and if there's a second train trying to go in the opposite direction on the same track you're going to get some interference up until now the solution has been to have the trains take turns or put all the trains on different tracks or frequencies but you can make things a lot more efficient by working around reciprocity researchers have used silicon transistors to create high-speed switches that halt thebackward roll of these waves is kind of like a signaling system that can momentarily reroute to train so that they can get past each other which means there's a lot more getting done on eachtrack a whole lot faster we're still working out many of the kinks with millimeter waves small cell networks massive MIMO beamforming and full-duplex all of 5g is still a work in progress it will likely include other new technologies too and making all of these systems work together will be a whole other challenge but if experts can figure that out ultrafast 5g service could arrive inthe next five years
