What Is 5G vs 4G?

Previous cellular architecture placed radio network access equipment at every cell station, which was costly to install and maintain. With progress made in virtualized, cloud-native RAN solutions and automation, the hardware at cell sites can be minimized, reducing real-estate costs for the cell stations.

This change will provide better performance, better energy efficiency, easier management, and lower network costs.

5G uses three different bands, each using different parts of the radio spectrum. Low, medium, and high bands offer performance with inversely varying speed and distance attributes.

Low band is the slowest of the three but performs the best over distances and through surfaces. High band is the fastest but is limited in distance, and has difficulties penetrating walls of buildings and other such structures.

The inability to penetrate hard structures such as buildings remains a challenge for the high-frequency bands. The midband offers a good balance of speed, penetration, and distance.

5G's low band sits at under 1GHz, near the frequencies used by 4G (under 6 GHz). However, its medium and high bands use frequencies previously unavailable. The medium band uses frequencies in the 1–2.6 GHz and 3.5–6 GHz range, and the high band uses frequencies in the 24–40 GHz range. Additional frequencies are still being allocated to 5G networks.

Increasing the number of antennae at cell base stations will allow 5G to use its bandwidth to transmit over more antennae at once, performing multiple inputs and outputs simultaneously.

Beamforming is a technology for applying directionality to cell transmissions. After a base station locates a specific user, it can transmit to them in a targeted way. Transmissions are aimed at the specific user rather than sent in all directions.

Full duplex refers to 5G's ability to operate on multiple bands at the same time. With the help of new switching and modulation technology, 5G can use this ability to transmit and receive simultaneously.

This process is not new, but 5G will make greater use of the ability to switch users between networks to improve performance.

This is a process for setting up direct communication between two devices through the cellular network. After a network operator sets up direct communication and specifies routing, the two devices will be configured for direct discovery and direct communication.

When using its high-frequency bandwidth, 5G's peak speeds could be up to 10 times faster than 4G, allowing data-heavy endpoint applications such as 4K/8K playback to stream from the cloud faster.

For some critical applications, latency may be a greater issue than achieving high speeds. 5G's latency can be four to five times less than that of 4G. Some of this reduction comes from improved technology in 5G radio.

Even more reductions are the result of a distributed, software-defined network that places critical network and service functions closer to the end device. This reduces latency by reducing the distance between radio and service/application.

Applications that depend on continuous micro transmissions, such as autonomous vehicles, will benefit the most from faster latency.

5G can support up to 100 times as many devices and endpoints as 4G. This means 5G is ready to support the next generation of user growth and the millions of IoT (Internet of Things) devices expected to come online in the near future.

5G is more energy efficient than 4G, starting with cell base designs that will allow carriers to reduce their energy consumption. More importantly, mobile devices operating in 5G use less energy as well, providing extended battery performance and life span. It's estimated that energy consumption per bit with 5G is just 10 percent of what 4G requires.

5G's data capacity can be up to 1,000 times that of 4G. With increased data capacity, performance will remain robust for all users when they connect to public networks in crowded locations like airports, performance.

The virtualization and advanced automation in 5G's architecture will allow much faster network deployments that can be performed and managed remotely.

Private 5G networks will be used to control and monitor factory and warehouse operations, as well as facilitate better communications with IoT devices, robotic equipment, and autonomous devices.

5G's bandwidth can solve the problem of poor performance on public networks in densely populated settings like office buildings or event venues.

AI applications that communicate continuously with the cloud will also benefit from 5G's performance attributes, especially its low latency. In turn, AI will make 5G networks operate faster, more efficiently, and with greater resiliency.

These technologies use large amounts of data, are latency-sensitive, and require continuous processing to be executed in the cloud. In fact, development of virtual and augmented reality has been held back by previous Wi-Fi and cellular networks. Now, 5G and Wi-Fi 6 are being counted on to help accelerate growth.