5G network to prioritise energy efficiency
The new network, which is predicted by many industry experts to launch commercially in 2025, is currently being developed by digital communications companies, with advances in the way the service will control its power consumption being a major consideration.
David Hammarwall, strategic product manager of radio at Ericsson, believes there are in-built inefficiencies in 4G, which the 5G developers aim to scrutinise in order to create a more efficient network.
"One of the deficiencies of 4G today is that it is always broadcasting signals. That limits the kind of energy saving you can do and also reduces performance because there is a lot of interference that this broadcast is creating even if the cells are almost empty,” he said.
"The energy efficiency is a key aspect of 5G. One aspect is what we call lean design, which means that you only transmit signals in conjunction with a data broadcast. The key advantage is that when there's no traffic on a node [connection] it is essentially turned off without power consumption.
"These lean designs will not only improve performance but also enable energy efficient solutions.
"Of course, in 5G we can take this to the next level, where we have a fully standardised solution and have the opportunity to reduce the power consumption and address energy efficiency along with improving the performance."
Energy efficiency developments are not expected to have an impact on the performance of 5G, with Professor Rahim Tafazolli, leader of the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey, claiming the technology could run a wireless data connection at 800Gbps; enough to download 33 HD films in one second.
