Home EuropeEurope I 2015 Providing capacity as the key challenge for 4G/5G networks

Providing capacity as the key challenge for 4G/5G networks

by Administrator
Dmitry OkorokovIssue:Europe I 2015
Article no.:9
Topic:Providing capacity as the key challenge for 4G/5G networks
Author:Dmitry Okorokov
Title:CEO
Organisation:InfiNet Wireless
PDF size:174KB

About author

Dmitry Okorokov is acting as the Chief Executive Officer for InfiNet Wireless, the world’s leading manufacturer of carrier-class Broadband Wireless equipment, for 7 years. Under his leadership, the company entered more than 20 new markets and released several generation of best-in-class wireless products and solutions.
Before taking this position, Mr. Okorokov worked as a Sales Director for South East Asian markets and as a technical expert and consultant both in hardware and software fields.
Mr. Okorokov has graduated with distinction for Urals State Technical University, one of the leading technical universities in Eastern Europe.

Article abstract

Providing capacity as the key challenge for 4G/5G networks

Full Article

Over the past decade, the world has seen an unprecedented growth of mobile networks, which, in their turn, aimed to provide more capacity and more services to the user. However, despite the fact that the quality of service and the connection speed have been growing at a very fast rate – from a few kilobits per second to several megabits per second in 2013-2014 – the demand has been growing at an even faster rate. This demand is boosted by a number of reasons which include the accessibility of personal mobile devices (i.e. smartphones and tablets) to play online videos, be online 24/7 in social networks, gaming and many other websites. Therefore, even though the capacity in mobile networks is now reaching megabits per second, it is still not enough to provide seamless service, specifically in the urban areas with a high density of users.
However, according to multiple surveys that were carried out with mobile operators around the globe, the biggest challenge of modern mobile networks is to provide a high-speed backhaul to Base Stations. This challenge will become even tougher with the transition to 5G – the demand in the capacity will only grow. 5G is set to bring an even greater rise in the prominence of mobile access and over time, any mobile app and any mobile service will be given the potential to connect to anything at any time. Many of these services, such as mobile Internet and mobile TV, require high bandwidth—and the current backhaul infrastructure is not optimised for handling such traffic.

Even in big cities with well-developed fiber infrastructure, they are struggling to deal with the volume of traffic and with an increase in the use of data this is only going to get worse. We will begin to see big cities migrate to using wireless backhauls which are set to become a big part of mobile network backhaul. In many cases fiber and other wired technologies prove to be expensive and take a long time to deploy. That is when the wireless backhaul technology becomes the only effective means of providing the required capacity. Just as 5G technology itself, the wireless backhaul also sees a number of key requirements it must meet in order to fit into the picture. That includes extremely high spectral efficiency – to minimize the cost of the frequency allocation or to minimize the interference, ultra-low latency, the ability to work in any weather conditions in non Line-of-Sight. Other challenges include equipment footprint, built-in interfaces and protocols to be able to seamlessly integrate into the existing operator’s infrastructure.
With 5G around the corner, 5G wireless access will face some key challenges including huge volumes of traffic, explosion in the number of devices and an increase in diversity of requirements such as latency, reliability and low cost. These challenges and requirements will stretch available technologies. A predicted vision of a Super Core based on IP platform, can connect all network operators to one Supercore with massive capacity. The concept of super core will prevent all interconnecting charges and complexities, which is a challenge for the operator. The Super Core is predicted to reduce the number of network entities in end to end connection, 5G networks will be speedier and have more capacity.
Ultimately, 5G is about the way networks interrelate and the customer experience they deliver. Over the next few years the world will see 5G wireless networks will support 1,000-fold gains in capacity, connections for at least 100 billion devices, and a ten Gb/s individual user experience capable of extremely low latency and response times. Deployment of these networks will emerge between 2020 and 2030. 5G radio access will be built upon both new radio access technologies and evolved existing wireless technologies. Breakthroughs in wireless network innovation will also drive economic and societal growth in entirely new ways. 5G will realise networks capable of providing zero distance connectivity between people and connected machines.

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