In fact, 5G will be different than the previous mobile generation at all domains.
1- 5G Spectrum
It’ll support different range of frequency bands FR1 or Sub 6GHz and it will be suitable for more coverage and capacity demands and FR2 or called mmWave that will be more for high capacity demands as it can support high bandwidths in GHz and this is suitable for small business places or some use cases like FWA and need small cells concepts.
2- Massive MIMO and Beamforming
Massive MIMO combined with beamforming are expected to play a key role in 5G.
In massive MIMO systems, large number of antennas connected to a BS simultaneously work for fewer terminals using similar time and carrier frequency resources.
And this will improve the capacity of the system 10X due to large number of antenna.
However, using a large number of antennas causes interference problems, which can be mitigated by deploying beamforming antennas instead of traditional antennas to enhance energy efficiency and Improve spectral efficiency.
3- Lean Design
Legacy networks transmit certain signals at regular intervals even when there is no data to transmit to any user. Reference signals, system broadcast data, and synchronization signals are models of these transmissions.
Ultra-design refers to minimizing these “always on” transmissions and Network should transmit signals only when necessary.
And this will improve network energy efficiency, reducing network Opex, and interference in high traffic load conditions.
4- Network Slicing
5G use network slicing to build use-case-specific networks.
Network slicing uses virtualization to combine network resources and build separate logical networks for specific purposes which address individual use cases, industries, or enterprises.
Each logical network shares the same physical network infrastructure and support systems, but is effectively distinct and isolated.
5- CUPS
Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS) isn’t a new concept in the wireless world, It’s part of 3GPP release 14.
It allows operators to separate the control plane that can sit in a centralized location and for the user plane to be placed closer to the application it is supporting.
This type of separation is key for applications such as the connected car to reduce the latency and scenario also works well for high-bandwidth applications like video.
6- MEC
MEC is one of the key pillars for meeting the demanding KPI of 5G especially low latency and BW efficiency use cases.
Unlike 4G, MEC was an add-on,5G is designed from the beginning to provide efficient and flexible support for edge computing to enable high performance and quality of experience.
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