5G on the Road to Reality

Ron Wilson, Intel FPGA
Dec.17, 2017

5G is moving forward. From a vague notion of the next big thing in wireless, to a loosely defined set of goals that all but invited overpromising, to an increasingly solid set of use cases and technical standards proposals, 5G is rapidly converging on realizable objectives and implementable standards. In the process it is becoming something very different from today’s cellular network.

What is It For?

Early on, much of the discussion about 5G was in terms of quantitative leaps: Gbps of bandwidth, huge areal density of connections in crowded urban markets, remarkable energy efficiency. Everything LTE is but more so. Such statements threatened to draw the 5G effort into an impossible situation. Systems architects across many application areas could presume the existence of an arbitrarily fast, infinitely available and reliable network and just assume 5G would bail them out.

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