Page 46 - How It Works - Book Of Amazing Answers To Curious Questions, Volume 05-15

What is How 5G

could work
5G? Transmitting data from Small base stations
To overcome the short range
of the signals, lots of small
base stations will be needed
lampposts and cars in the
in order to pass on the radio
towns and cities of the future
waves of larger masts and
dodge buildings.
How the next generation
of mobile communication Personal connection
Each base station would
could help to connect us, contain hundreds of
antennas packed together,
our homes and our cars potentially one for each
nearby mobile device.
any of us don’t even have access to the
4G mobile network yet, but already
Mthe race is on to develop 5G. With
demand for mobile data doubling each year, this

fifth-generation technology will soon be
required to satisfy our ever-increasing need to
browse the web and stream online content on
our mobile devices. It will also be needed to
connect the technology of the future, such as Supply and
driverless cars, smart cities and the ‘Internet demand
of Things’ – a network of everyday objects that The base stations
could also share data
communicate with each other to make our between themselves
lives easier. in order to work out
how much each user
Although some parts of the world are expected
needs and distributing
to have 5G as early as 2018, the technology it accordingly.
behind it hasn’t actually been fully fi gured out
yet. Some companies are looking to build on THE
THE
existing technologies, simply making 4G radio KINGS
KINGS
frequencies faster. Others believe the entire HEAD
HEAD
radio network will need to be restructured. For
example, one promising concept for 5G involves
using high-frequency millimetre-waves and a
series of base stations connected to buildings
and lampposts.
What we do know is that 5G will be incredibly
fast. It’s expected to be about 100 times faster
than 4G, allowing you to download an entire fi lm
in under a second. Latency – the time it takes for
Food
data to start transferring – will be greatly
Sausage
reduced, meaning the video you want to stream & Mash
Pies
will start instantly when you press play. 5G will Chips
also have a much larger capacity, enabling more
users to access the network at once and
potentially bringing an end to those restrictive
data limits imposed my mobile operators.
Of course, your current mobile phone is
unlikely to work with any future 5G network,
as it will probably need new hardware and Shorter reach
Higher-frequency
software to support it. However, by the time
waves don’t travel as far
5G does become available, you will probably and struggle to pass
have upgraded your handset anyway, through buildings,
causing a signal drop.
and manufacturers are guaranteed to have kit
out their newest models with the most up-to-
date technology available.

46 How It Works