Published on the 17/05/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
The telco announced it has developed a new 5G wireless technology several hundred times faster than current 4G networks, but critics are dubious…
The company reports that it has created the world’s first adaptive array transceiver technology operating in the millimetre-wave Ka bands for cellular communications. The new technology sits at the core of 5G mobile communications system and will reportedly provide data transmission up to several hundred times faster than current 4G networks.
Samsung describes 5G mobile communications technology as the next generation of the existing 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network technology. “5G will be capable of providing an ever-present Gbps experience to subscribers and offers data transmission speeds of up to several tens of Gbps per base station,” the company claims.
“The millimetre-wave band is the most effective solution to recent surges in wireless internet usage,” said ChangYeong Kim, executive vice president of Samsung Electronics and head of the digital media & communication (DMC) R&D Centre. “Samsung’s recent success in developing the adaptive array transceiver technology has brought us one step closer to the commercialisation of 5G mobile communications in the millimetre-wave bands.”
The implementation of a high-speed 5G cellular network requires a broad band of frequencies, much like an increased water flow requires a wider pipe. While it was a recognised option, it has been long believed that the millimetre-wave bands had limitations in transmitting data over long distances due to its unfavourable propagation characteristics.
However, Samsung says its new adaptive array transceiver technology has proved itself as a successful solution. It transmits data in the millimetre-wave band at a frequency of 28 GHz at a speed of up to 1.056 Gbps to a distance of up to two kilometres. “The adaptive array transceiver technology, using 64 antenna elements, can be a viable solution for overcoming the radio propagation loss at millimetre-wave bands, much higher than the conventional frequency bands ranging from several hundred MHz to several GHz,” it said in a statement.
However, according to an article in the Guardian, researchers are playing down the claims. Shahram Niri, deputy director of the 5G Innovation Centre at Centre for Communications Systems Research (CCSR) at the University of Surrey, was interviewed by the Guardian and said the key issue is there is no agreed-upon standard for 5G yet.
“There are a number of areas in which this technology is being improved,” Niri said. “What Samsung has done has touched on one of the areas relating to antennas, and with that achieved a higher data rate – but this is just one of many methods being examined to increase it.”
Other elements required to build the standard include the method of encoding data in the radio carrier wave and the frequencies to be used, Niri continued in the article.
Samsung’s latest announcement, coupled with our insatiable hunger for more data, will likely reinvigorate research in to 5G communications. Samsung said it believes its announcement will trigger the creation of international alliances and the timely commercialisation of related mobile broadband services. It now plans to accelerate the research and development of 5G mobile communications technologies, including the adaptive array transceiver at the millimetre-wave bands, to commercialise those technologies by 2020.
