The Key Differences Between 4G and 5G
The cellular industry performs every decade a major upgrade for its wireless infrastructure. The mobile phones in 2000s were dominated by 3G and last decade ran on 4G.
Last year in the US first 5G networks are started to debut, which could provoke the inquiry: what is the difference between the 4G cellular network you use now and 5G networks that are coming?
The Key Differences of 4G and 5G are:
Between the two networking technologies there are some major differences.
Speed
In many discussions around 5G, speed is much of the time the specification which is used to differentiate it from 4G. Furthermore that seems ok, since each cellular generation has been altogether faster than the one before. Currently 4G reaches to the top speeds of upto 100 Mbps, generally real world performance is not more than 35 Mbps.
With a top theoretical speed, 5G is hundread times faster than the 4G around 20 Gbps and current, from 50 Mbps to 3 Gbps real world speed.
In any case, its somewhat more complicated than that. 5G has three main flavors and each one has its own speed. So the low-band 5G is fairly quicker than 4G with execution around 50-250 Mbps. The quickest version of 5G called high-band 5G, is the variant that reaches at 3 Gbps.
What frequency is 5G ?
Following in the steps of 3G and 4G/LTE, 5G is the fifth major generation of mobile cellular network. This 5G is being deployed around the world by wireless carriers and in many major cities it is available to a limited degree. That means it will take several years for the 5G system to be fully deployed and widely available.
5G is not broadcast on a single frequency. For different applications having several frequencies used by 5G network. This is one of the most confusing aspect of 5G.
About 5G frequencies
5G will be able to reach at its highest speeds, about 2 gigabits per second (Gbps) – this is fasater than LTE as two orders of magnitude, that tops-out around 35 megabits per second(Mbps).
Overview of these frequency bands
- Low-band 5G operates between 600-850 MHz
- Mid-band 5G operates in the 2.5-3.7 GHz range
- High-band 5G is the band that is most commonly associated with 5G. Operating at 25-39 GHz, this is known as “millimeter wave” spectrum and delivers gigabit speeds (currently tested as high as 1.8 Gbps).
Latency
It is a measure of the time . To travel between two points it takes a packet of information. Currently In 4G networks latency is about 50 milliseconds. In 5G networks it can be expected to shrink that to an impressive 1 ms. For many applications reducing latency will be critical, for processing of data to relay on the cloud, where 5G will allow the connected devices such as self driving cars which use 5G to let a cloud based AI. This make real time navigational decisions.
Coverage
Around the world, still there are remote and rural areas which have poor 4G coverage. Just 5G is getting started and in major cities essentially its coverage is non-existent outside. Similar to 4G to reach a level of coverage 5G will take several years and each with its own speed and bandwidth it will have different implementations like low, medium, high-band 5G.
Currently In the US, you can find 5G in a total of about 100 cities. Coverage is limited to those 100 cities and in certain parts of town it offers only solid performance.
Bandwidth
Comparing to 4G we can expect 5G have significantly more bandwidth. From 600 MHz to 2.5 GHz, 4G uses a narrow slice of the available spectrum. But 5G is divided into three different frequency bands. For consumers, businesses and industries will have different applications.
Frequently Asked Questions on 4G vs 5G
Q. Who Invented the 5G Technology?
Ans: The first Nation that Invented the 5G technology is South Korea to adopt on a large scale, On April 19 at 224 Operators in 88 Countries around the world.
Q. What is better about 5G than 4G?
Ans: 5G is 100 times faster than 4G. Download speed of 5G is 10 gigabits per second. This is 100 times faster than 4G.
Q. What does 5G do that 4G don’t?
Ans: 5G currently offers faster download speed. 4G is still maintaining the reasonable coverage areas which offers the benefit of working indoors.
Q. What are disadvantages of 5G?
Ans: 5G has limited global coverage area and is available only in the specific locations.Only cities will be benefit a lot from the 5G network and the remote areas may not get coverage it for some more years.This is the main disadvantage of 5G. Moreover for setting the tower stations, the expenses are very high when compared to other networks.