5G is hitting the streets of Plano, Texas and Stockholm, Sweden as Ericsson tests its new 5G mobile device.
The massive mobile testbed on wheels is designed to allow Ericsson to replicate any device from a tablet to smartphone to PC at 5G speeds.
In this edition of “How it works,” Keith Shank, director of Ericsson’s Advanced Technology Lab shows RCRtv the device and explains what it can do.
Shank explains the drivable device uses a 200 megahertz-wide channel at 13 gigahertz spectrum and is currently capable of 5.7 Gbps downlink speed on a TDD channel.
The prototype operates on a basic OFDM channel and uses a MIMO 4×4 radio system to achieve the blazing fast speeds. It is also part of a bigger network that includes a four-antenna base station that allows for 100 megahertz-wide output per radio.
Shank expects by the end of the summer for the downlink throughput to double to somewhere around 10 Gbps as they increase to a 400 megahertz-wide channel.
He says while this device may seem large, it is nothing compared to previous generations of mobile technology. “My first HSPA mobile was a bus, an entire bus. My first LTE mobile were two nine foot tall racks.”
One of the biggest goals for 5G is to dramatically cut down on latency. Shank says this device is a first step in that direction.
“The latency is going to drop from the 100 millisecond range to the sub-ten millisecond range,” he says, “…so this is a perfect concept for near real-time and real-time operations.”
He adds that the 5G technology’s influence will be pervasive. With this device, Ericsson is looking to be at the forefront of bringing 5G from an idea to a reality in the mobile world.
“It is not just for me to download my videos faster,” he said, “but it is for machine-to-machine and the network society and that’s what we’re looking toward.”
Shank says Ericsson is also working on an outdoor network that will be available later in the summer.