Engineering Marvel: 5G Network Technology

5G network is the 5th generation wireless network generated from 2019. Verizon is the first company to launch the 5G network service worldwide in Chicago and Minneapolis in 3rd April, 2019. The aim of this project is to increase the network speed and responsiveness for the wireless network. By using 5G wireless network, it has 20Gbps for the network travel rate. Thus, 5G assists people work and entertain in a more efficient way and develop users’ experience. Besides the development in speed, capacity and latency, 5G technology also provide network management features, that enables wireless network devices to make connection with home appliances. For invention and construction of 5G network, it requires engineering from telecommunication, software, mechatronics, electrical and civil fields. Telecommunication, software and mechatronics engineers mainly work on solving coding, systematic errors. Electrical and civil engineering focus their work on construction and electrical connection on cell tower. In future, 5G technology will be broadly used in various areas such as healthcare, education, economic and agriculture.

Importance

In 2018, there are 17.8 billion connected devices globally, and 7 billion of them can connect and control by smart phone. Due to period of heavy use in network, consumers may experience slow speed, unstable connection, delays or loss of service. These issues may cause huge damage and risks on emergency situations. Industries and consumers rely on 5G networks to support devices and transmission to drive for their daily activities. 5G can provide most consistent network connection, minimal lag time, increased bandwidth to access and share data, and the ability to compile and compute data efficiently. 5G technology enable to process activities such as remote patient monitoring, consultation and remote surgery through thousands of devices simultaneously from mobile to equipment sensors, cameras and wireless devices. Due to study from Deloitte in 2017, in transportation, the technology enables autonomous vehicle, which could reduce emissions by 40-90%, travel time decreased nearly 40% and delays by 20%. Thus, 5G network technology is extremely significant, since it promotes social development and improve the quality of life.

Process Design

Spectrum, the radio frequencies used to communicate over airwaves. In 5G deployment, it requires mixture of high, medium, and low-band spectrum. Millimeter wave spectrum (mmWave), has been used in 5G technology, it has shorter wavelength and higher frequency compare to 4G network, therefore 5G enables to carry massive amount of data through wireless network at faster speed in a more stable Internet connection environment with low latency. Most operators for 5G network integrate from 4G networks at beginning, to provide a continuous connection. 5G network architecture is constructed by 4G and 5G network facilities together between central and local server, aiming to provide faster content and lower latency applications for customers. There are two main components in mobile network: the radio access network and the core network.

The radio access network consists by various types of facilities including small cells, towers, masts and home systems that provide connection between mobile users and wireless devices towards the main core network. Small cells are the main characteristic of 5G network, especially with the connection of the new millimeter wave (mmWave) in a short range. Small cells need to be distributed in clusters the macro network that provides wide-area coverage on users’ working area. 5G macro cells has multiple elements to send and receive massive amount of data simultaneously by using MIMO antennas (multiple input, multiple output). MIMO antennas can be used in condition of having large numbers of antenna elements, this maintains high network throughput and smooth network usage.

The core network is the technology that manages mobile exchange and data network for all mobile voice, data and Internet connections. The core network has been slightly redesigned for 5G since it needs to reduce latency and distributed servers across network. Many functions of 5G have been managed and processed in the core in areas of network function virtualization and network slicing for different applications and services.

Network slicing enables industries, businesses or institutions to segment the network, where can be operate in emergency situation independently from other users.

Save your time!
We can take care of your essay

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Place Order

Network function virtualization (NFV) has the ability to instantiate network functions within operator’s cloud platform at any location. NFV is an important technology in 5G, it enables to increase speed efficiency and agility to support new business applications.

5G Cooperation with 4G

When users’ devices are available to make connection with 5G network, 4G network will provide controlling signal and transfer the network system from 4G to 5G, aiming to have faster data transmission by having the existing 4G capacity. Even though under 5G coverage, data will still be carrying in 4G as continuous connection, therefore 5G network is the supplementary for the existing 4G technology.

Challenges

1st Challenge: Frequency Bands

From 4G network, the frequency bands are below 6GHz (Gigahertz), but now 5G requires higher frequencies, 300GHz, which is about 50 times of 4G network, and bands that has higher frequency will requires higher standard of millimeter waves and becomes more complicated to design compare to the lower frequency range. Currently, there are people worries about the high frequency of network may cause medical health issues on human bodies, but by comparing the Hertz between mmWaves, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma radiation. Researchers discovered that mmWave radiation is non-ionizing. Therefore, the main concern for mmWave is the heating of eyes and skin cause by the absorption of the radiation into human body. Also, construction of spectrum will cost $690 million for U.S. by December 2018, which is a huge cost.

2nd Challenge: Deployment and Coverage

5G does has great superiority in areas of speed and bandwidth compare to any existed network technology, but it has a limited range that requires further infrastructure. The mmWave communication is the core technology for 5G, it allows user to access data in a more stable and more efficient Internet connection, but it also has disadvantages, such as can be easily blocked by obstacles, and small coverage due to its short wavelength. These disadvantages may lead Internet error or loss connection easily, even though 5G technology can automatically change from 5G to 4G services, but it still affects users’ using experience, especially it effects on huge range of users due to local servers. Therefore, spreading across to rural areas will be as a difficult challenge for engineers since 5G antennas can only send data in shorter distances compare to other networks.

Social Issues

Due to the importance of network using in people’s daily life, security and privacy is the main issue people worries about. Especially 5G technology allows several devices to be connected to the Internet at same time. The action taken is that Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) is designed to build trust between the network and users.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the appearance of 5G technology is necessary, and helpful for current needs and era, it provides advantages, such as higher speed of data connection between different wireless devices, and the disadvantage is that the technology still has few significant technical issues need to be solved and may not be well-prepared to establish or be broadly introduced to the public.