As our methods of communication continue to improve, so do the networks they run on. With this progress comes the growing need for 5G speed.

While most of us only see 5G as a mobile broadband network that allows us to view social media on our phones at a faster pace, it means much more to people in industries like energy, electricity, water, transportation, government services, and health services.

It’s a network that supports a conflicting and extensive range of requirements in terms of flexibility, performance, security, resilience, bandwidth, and latency. It’s resilient, programmable, and can support applications using virtual reality, augmented reality, 4K, or 8K video, or an immersive reality system. It’s something that does all this at speeds, connectivity, and capacity around 1,000 times more than we get from our current that 4G network(s).

Rahim Tafazolli is a Regius Professor of Electronic Engineering and the Founder and Director of 5GIC, 6GIC, and ICS (Institute for Communication System) at the University of Surrey. In a recent Wiley webinar, he shed some light on what changes 5G will bring and how it will improve our lives. He answered the following questions:

Which antenna would be most useful in 5G?

5G is based on massive multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) 64 x 64 antenna element arrays. With the dual-polarization that’s part of the 5G technology, it will evolve to 128 x 128 antennas, especially when we go to higher frequency bands.

Those higher frequencies are more about the beamforming and tracking side, whereas the lower frequency band is more about the multiplexing gain and the throughput side.

What's missing in the current 5G that will require a new standard in the future?

From my experience, nobody has come up with anything that 5G standards can’t support. However, with upcoming releases of network improvements, there could be a problem with time synchronization.

Will 5G support Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)?

Yes, even when the network’s slicing (sending signals to different points).

What’s the benefit of polar codes versus turbo code in LTE?

Turbo codes require a lot of computation and are too heavy and strong for the role they want to play. Polar codes are effectively reckless codes, and you can have different sides of the polar codes and a very simple construct.

Plus, you don’t need too much overhead on the bandwidth utilization using polar codes. That's why it has been used for the control channel. It’s a rate-less code whereas turbo codes are not.

Are completed standards for IoT still valid for a while?

With 3X architectures, they’ll carry on until we have complete standards for core network and radio access for 5G to be operated on standalone. In a non-standalone architecture, 3X architectures are used.

Which architecture option will be used in 5G?

It depends on the capital expenditures (CAPEX) versus the operational expenditures (OPEX), which basically is a cost-benefit analysis. I know many people say that in 5G, we need a lot of small cells. This isn’t strictly true because we need small cells in areas where capacity is limited, unlike in a network where coverage is limited.

The combination of 4G and 5G addresses capacity limited environment and 4G itself provides the coverage of the limited environment. We aren’t going to have millions of millions of small cells everywhere.

How can we learn more?

This is only the tip of the 5G discussion. For more information, watch the full webinar here. You can also browse our latest titles which cover many other hot topics in the field.