Advantages of 5G Technology | Disadvantages of 5G Technology

Advantages of 5G Technology | Disadvantages of 5G Technology

This page covers advantages and disadvantages of 5G technology and 5G basics.
It mentions benefits or advantages of 5G technology and drawbacks or disadvantages of 5G technology.

Introduction to 5G technology:
The specifications of 5G are specified in 3GPP Rel. 15 and beyond.
5G is the short form of fifth Generation. 5G technology supercedes 4G LTE standard.
The 5G NR (New Radio) initial specifications have been finalized by
3GPP in december 2017.

5G will be deployed in two phases viz. non-standalone and standalone.
In non-standalone phase, control mechanism is leveraged using existing 4G LTE
network and data transfer takes place using 5G network infrastructure.
In standalone phase, control and data mechanism both are carried out
using 5G network elements.

The 5G technology based devices operate in different bands from 3 to 300 GHz.
The frequency ranges below 6 GHz is used for 5G macro optimized,
3 to 30 GHz for 5G E small cells, 30 to 100 GHz for 5G Ultra Dense and
30 to 300 GHz is used for 5G millimeter wave.

5G NR Overall architecture for advantages of 5G and disadvantages of 5G

Many technologies fall under 5G. It includes LTE-U (LTE Unlicensed), C-V2X (Cellular Vehicle to Everything),
LTE for IoT, cellular drone etc. Following are the main features of 5G technology.
• Bandwidth: Supports 1Gbps or higher
• Frequency bands: Sub-1 GHz, 1 to 6 GHz, > 6 GHz in mm bands (28 GHz, 40 GHz)
• Peak data rate: Approx. 1 to 10 Gbps
• Cell Edge Data rate: 100 Mbps
• End to End delay : 1 to 5 ms

Benefits or Advantages of 5G technology

Following are the benefits or advantages of 5G technology:
➨Data rates of about 10 Gbps or higher can be achieved. This provides better user
experience as download and upload speeds are higher.
➨Latency of less than 1 ms can be achieved in 5G mm wave. This leads to immediate connection establishment and
release with 5G network by 5G smartphones. Hence traffic load is decreased on 5G base stations.
➨Higher bandwidth can be used with the help of carrier aggregation feature.
➨Antenna size is smaller at higher frequencies. This leads to use of massive MIMO concept to
achieve higher data rates.
➨Dynamic beamforming is employed to overcome pathloss at higher frequencies.
➨Due to improved 5G network architecture handoff is smooth and hence it does not
have any effect on data transfer when mobile user changes cells.
➨Typically 5G offers 10x throughput, 10x decrease in latency, 10x connection density,
3x spectrum efficiency, 100x traffic capacity and 100x network efficiency.

Drawbacks or Disadvantages of 5G technology

Following are the drawbacks or disadvantages of 5G technology:
➨It requires skilled engineers to install and maintain 5G network.
Moreover 5G equipments are costly. This increases cost of 5G deployment and maintenance phases.
➨5G smartphones are costly. Hence it will take some time for the common man to
make use of 5G technology.
➨The technology is still under development and will take
time before it is fully operational without any issues.
➨Coverage distance of upto 2 meters (in indoor) and 300 meters (in outdoor) can be
achieved due to higher losses at high frequencies (such as millimeter waves). 5G mmwave suffers from
many such losses (penetration loss, attenuation due to rain, foliage loss etc.)
➨It will take time for security and privacy issues to be resolved fully in 5G network.

Conclusion: In order to understand advantages of 5G and disadvantages of 5G one has to understand 5G
basics from 5G tutorial
and 5G index of resources.
Refer 5G applications of use cases
which are results of 5G technology benefits.

5G NR Numerology | 5G NR Terminology

5G NR Control channels | 5G NR Traffic Channels | 5G NR Reference Signals and sequences

5G TECHNOLOGY RELATED LINKS

This 5G tutorial also covers following sub topics on the 5G technology:
5G basic tutorial
5G Frequency Bands
5G millimeter wave tutorial
5G mm wave frame
5G millimeter wave channel sounding
Difference between 4G and 5G
5G testing and test equipments
5G network architecture
5G NR Physical layer
5G NR MAC layer
5G NR RLC layer
5G NR PDCP layer

Advantages and Disadvantages of other wireless technologies

What is Difference between

difference between OFDM and OFDMA
Difference between SC-FDMA and OFDM
Difference between SISO and MIMO
Difference between TDD and FDD
FDMA vs TDMA vs CDMA
FDM vs TDM
CDMA vs GSM

RF and Wireless Terminologies

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