In today's times, we are listening much about 5G. In today's post, we will see what is 5G and what are its advantages and disadvantages?
5G is the fifth generation of mobile networking as 4G is 4th and 3G is third.
5G wireless technology is meant to deliver higher multi-Gbps peak data speeds, ultra-low latency, more reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, and a more uniform user experience to more users. Higher performance and improved efficiency empower new user experiences and connect new industries.
5G gives carriers more options in terms of airwaves than 4G did. Most notably, it opens up "high-band," short-range airwaves that didn't work with 4G technology. But 5G can run on any frequency, leading to three very different kinds of 5G experiences—low, middle, and high.
The key thing to understand here is that 5G isn't much faster than 4G on the same old radio channels. Instead, the 5G spec lets phones use much wider channels across a broader range of frequencies. The carriers and the FCC have to make those wider channels available, though, and that's where they've largely fallen short.
With 4G, you can combine up to seven, 20MHz channels to use a total of 140MHz of the spectrum. Most of the time, though, phones are using 60MHz or less.
With new phones in low- and mid-band 5G, you can combine two 100MHz channels for 200MHz usage—and stack several more 20MHz 4G channels on top of that. In high-band 5G, you can use up to eight 100MHz channels. But if you don't have the airwaves available, you don't get the speeds.
Carriers can also flexibly share channels between 4G and 5G using dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS). DSS makes the walls between 4G and 5G channels movable, so carriers can split channels between 4G and 5G based on demand. That's what Verizon has been using for its "nationwide" 5G. It doesn't free up any new airwaves for 5G—it just reuses odds and ends of 4G—so we haven't seen DSS 5G offer better performance than 4G.
How 5G works?
Like other cellular networks, 5G networks use a system of cell sites that divide their territory into sectoYes. Online conspiracy theories have blamed 5G for everything from cancer to coronavirus, but they tend to fall apart at the slightest tap of actual facts. Low-band and mid-band 5G are based on radio frequencies that have been used for decades. Low-band 5G uses UHF TV bands, which have been in use since 1952. Sprint's mid-band has been in use at least since 2007; parts of it were first used in 1963.
The greatest 5G worries in the US tend to be around high-band, or millimeter-wave, 5G. This is the short-range type that requires a lot of small cell sites, so the infrastructure is more visible than it was before. The ironic thing about worrying that millimeter-wave will fry your cells isn't that it's too strong, but that it's too weak: It's blocked by leaves, walls, glass, cars, clothing, and skin.rs and send encoded data through radio waves. Each cell site must be connected to a network backbone, whether through a wired or wireless backhaul connection.
5G networks use a type of encoding called OFDM, which is similar to the encoding that 4G LTE uses. The air interface is designed for much lower latency and greater flexibility than LTE, though.
5G networks need to be much smarter than previous systems, as they're juggling many more and smaller cells that can change size and shape. But even with existing macro cells, Qualcomm says 5G will be able to boost capacity by four times over current systems by leveraging wider bandwidths and advanced antenna technologies.
The goal is to have far higher speeds available, and far higher capacity per sector, at far lower latency than 4G. The standards bodies involved are aiming at 20Gbps speeds and 1ms latency, at which point very interesting things begin to happen.
Is 5G safe?
Yes. Online conspiracy theories have blamed 5G for everything from cancer to coronavirus, but they tend to fall apart at the slightest tap of actual facts. Low-band and mid-band 5G are based on radio frequencies that have been used for decades. Low-band 5G uses UHF TV bands, which have been in use since 1952. Sprint's mid-band has been in use at least since 2007; parts of it were first used in 1963.
The greatest 5G worries in the US tend to be around high-band, or millimeter-wave, 5G. This is the short-range type that requires a lot of small cell sites, so the infrastructure is more visible than it was before. The ironic thing about worrying that millimeter-wave will fry your cells isn't that it's too strong, but that it's too weak: It's blocked by leaves, walls, glass, cars, clothing, and skin.
Power levels are extremely important. Bluetooth and microwave ovens run on the same frequency. Because millimeter-wave signals are technically called a microwave, some people are convinced they are literal microwave ovens that will fry us. But a firefly isn't a blowtorch, and the 5G systems are more on the firefly end of things.
Studies of mmWave have shown that it doesn't penetrate human skin well and that its strongest effect, at levels of power higher than any 5G network uses, is that it makes things slightly warmer. At the levels 5G networks use, there's no perceptible effect on people.
But the most self-condemning thing about the mutable 5G conspiracists is that they don't care about any of these details. A popular petition in the UK in early 2020 claimed that 5G runs at "60 megahertz" and is "sucking all of the oxygen out of the air." It got more than 114,000 signatures on change.org before being deleted. 60 megahertz is much lower than any wireless network frequency; they might mean 60GHz, but no 5G network is using that yet either. As for the oxygen, well, there's a network of pseudo-scientists with degrees in things like "natural health" who are claiming all sorts of complete nonsense on YouTube.
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