Telcos and companies, which have taken the lead on 5G, have indicated that this band may be used by industries and specialised factory units for building captive networks that can be moulded into the needs of that particular industry. The mid-band spectrum, on the other hand, offers higher speeds compared to the low band, but has limitations in terms of coverage area and penetration of signals.
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This means that while telcos can use and install it for commercial cellphone users who may not have specific demands for very high speed Internet, the low band spectrum may not be optimal for specialised needs of the industry.
Our goal is to provide the whole world with 5G and 6G, even in the most remote places," says Maximidis.While the low band spectrum has shown great promise in terms of coverage and speed of Internet and data exchange, the maximum speed is limited to 100 Mbps (Megabits per second). The next step is to now build a prototype. "Through this test, we demonstrated that our long-distance concept works outside the lab. A connection was successfully established with the antennas from the roof of two buildings on the TU Eindhoven campus. The system was recently tested for the first time in practice. Maximidis: "Our system aligns the signals electronically so that the antennas don't have to move mechanically.
The high-frequency signals require the transmitting and receiving antennas to be precisely aligned with each other under all weather conditions. According to Maximidis, the result is a signal strength 100 times higher than current techniques, which means that a distance five times greater can be achieved on a sunny day. "The antennas bundle multiple signals into a very narrow, strong beam of radio waves, similar to a laser beam," says Ronis Maximidis, PhD candidate at TU/e and co-founder of MaxWaves.
Through spin-off MaxWaves, the technology has been further developed into a demonstrator – the first step towards a prototype. The technology uses a constellation of electronically-controlled antennas, which electronically steer the radio beams in the right direction, combined with a dish antenna to focus the energy and increase the distance. "The problem with sending signals at these high frequencies is that they are only strong enough at a very short distance," says Bart Smolders, Professor of Telecommunications.įor a number of years, work has been carried out at TU/e on antennas that enable signals at these high frequencies (and even higher, such as 6G) over longer distances. Very high frequencies (80 GHz) will be used for these connections. This increase in speed will require a similar increase in the capacity of the connections between the base stations of the network. The capacity then immediately increases by a factor of 100, which is required for self-driving cars (for example). This is why efforts are being made towards a form of 5G that works at much higher frequencies – 26 GHz, to be precise. But the higher the frequency, the more data you can send.
This first phase, using relatively low frequencies, is slightly faster than 4G. The next generation of wireless networks, 5G, is expected to be rolled out commercially in 2020.