5G Explained

Preface

Mobile communication systems have vastly evolved since the introduction of the first, analogue generation in 1980s. Ever since, each new commercial system has offered novelty functions and features outperforming the older ones. The current generations have indeed been operational in a parallel fashion all this time except for the very first generation, which was decommissioned practically everywhere as we entered new millennia.

The fourth generation – the 3GPP's LTE‐Advanced being the flagship of this era – has claimed its position as the most established system in global scale during 2010s. We are now looking forward to using the next, completely new generation, as has been the “tradition” for the past few decades. Based on these quite systematic cycles, it is easy to guess that the fifth generation will be again superior compared to any of its predecessors in terms of spectral efficiency, data rates, and capacity, among other important aspects essential for fluent user experiences. This time, 5G is an optimized enabler for time‐ and delay‐sensitive applications such as virtual‐reality and augmented‐reality solutions.

Not only does 5G have considerable enhancements in terms of the latency and data rates, but it also takes care of a huge amount of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. It is assumed that machine‐to‐machine type of communications (MTC) will grow significantly during and after the first half of the 2010s. 5G is optimized by default for supporting such a big number ...