Re:Why is the ‘race to 5G’ a race?
by inflatableDodo on Monday May 27, 2019 @04:02PM
(#20024889)
>Now think about running internet fiber to every streetlight.
Streetlights are usually within sight of each other. Can't we just add light sensors that point at the neighboring lights and modulate the brightness by a fraction if we want to do messaging?
Streetlights are usually white, which means there’s a phosphor, which drastically limits the modulation frequency. Also, the lights themselves (at least where I live) are owned by the city or PG&E. Good luck getting them to cooperate that deeply with carriers. Also, the lights are off in the daytime.
That being said, in the absence of fog and heavy rain, optical communication between light poles isn’t that crazy.
Re:Why is the ‘race to 5G’ a race?
by inflatableDodo on Monday May 27, 2019 @05:06PM
(#20025254)
Was thinking mostly of messaging for the lights themselves, telling lights to tun on or off, checking that they are on or off and also that they aren't misbehaving, that sort of thing, so relatively slow modulation would probably be fine.
I’m pretty sure OP was referencing streetlights for how dense you need your base stations for millimeter wave communication networks.
>Additionally, almost no two countries actually have overlapping 5G bands
What does that mean? The 5G NR in the future will be reformed from the current LTE, and aren't we all set for mmWave AND 3.x Ghz Spectrum for 5G? I think that is what the majority of EU, South Korea, Taiwan and China are doing. I am pretty sure that is what US and Canada are doing as well.
Even the sub-6GHz spectrum allocations in various countries don't overlap that much. But yeah, the 3-6 GHz spectrum is going to be the biggest game changer since it will actually propagate okay and doesn't have the phase noise problems of very high frequencies. https://www.microwavejournal.com/articles/31757-global-5g-ru...
Will phones have multiple antennas for 5G?
Yes, for millimeter wave. They require line of sight and are easily blocked by hand position in addition to multiple antennas being required for achieving the data thoroughput improvements of MIMO. The entire phone will have to be covered in antenna.
I remember the old fractal antennas for handling different frequencies. Maybe those will still be used.
Re:Why is the ‘race to 5G’ a race?
by emilfihlman on Monday May 27, 2019 @05:57AM
(#20020804)
>5G-NR standard only gives a 15-20%
15-25% is _fucking_ _huge_. Even a few percent increase would be worth it for telcos.
15%-20% might be huge for Verizon’s CFO and shareholders, but it’s inconsequential for consumers who are currently being sold some terabit-IoT-self-driving-car-VR-surgery yarn in an effort to get governments to give handouts of property and spectrum to anyone waving the magical 5g sauce.
Re:Why is the ‘race to 5G’ a race?
by Cookiesaurusbex on Monday May 27, 2019 @08:57PM
(#20026348)
It's also inconsequential for everyone who has a data cap on their phone plan. Running out of data 20% sooner isn't a win for people who can't afford a luxury plan.
Re:Why is the ‘race to 5G’ a race?
by emilfihlman on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @07:44AM
(#20029101)
This is absolutely a 100% silly way to look at it. The same amount of data is used even if you had slow or fast internet.
Re:Why is the ‘race to 5G’ a race?
by emilfihlman on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @07:43AM
(#20029094)
And who do you think is pushing for 5G?
The companies who will benefit from this 15-20%.
It's 20% not 25% (more accurately, 19%). These are real numbers not something I made up. And the increase in bandwidth from 3G to 4G was ~4x, 400%, so the increase from 4G LTE modulation to 5G NR is pretty marginal in comparison.
Re:Why is the ‘race to 5G’ a race?
by emilfihlman on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @07:44AM
(#20029105)
I quoted, I didn't come up with the numbers.
Additionally, almost no two countries actually have overlapping 5G bands. It's a mess of competing standards. So it'll be different frontend modules for controlling the antenna arrays required on the handsets (high power usage and space requirements) due to the integration required. Handsets are going to have to get bigger. Unlikably big and specific to region.
And beyond that the 5G setups being implemented now aren't stand alone. They're both LTE and Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G. The 5G just provides extra bandwidth and isn't used as a control for the handsets. It more than doubles the complexity of setups because of the trouble RF designers have to take with harmonics and intermodulation. All the competing national freq band standards mean different filtering solutions.
The future will not be evenly distributed.