Samsung's 5G mobile claims played down by experts

Researchers have played down claims by Samsung to have developed "5G" mobile systems able to transmit data hundreds of times faster than 4G networks, pointing out that its tests only apply to one element of the system needed to implement a standard.
The key problem is that there is no agreed 5G standard – and may not be for years, explained Shahram Niri, deputy director of the 5G Innovation Centre at Centre for Communications Systems Research (CCSR) at the University of Surrey.
"There are a number of area in which this technology is being improved," Niri said. "What Samsung has done has touched on one of the areas relating to antennas, and with that achieved a higher data rate – but this is just one of many methods being examined to increase it."

 
Other elements required to build the standard include the method of encoding data in the radio carrier wave and the frequencies to be used, Niri said. "Here in CCSR we have been working on several other areas."
The CCSR has around £35m of funding, including £11m from the Higher Education Funding Council for England and another £24m from mobile phone operators and infrastructure providers, including Huawei, Samsung, Telefonica Europe, Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe, Rohde and Schwarz and Aircom International.
Samsung this week said it had tested a new transceiver capable of sending and receiving data at speeds of more than 1,000 megabits per second (Mbps) over a distances up to two kilometres. That compares with 4G services that are now being implemented in the UK which offer average speeds of between 8 Mbps and 12 Mbps – which is still substantially faster than 3G services that have been in use since 2003.
"The new technology sits at the core of 5G mobile communications system and will provide data transmission up to several hundred times faster than current 4G networks," Samsung said in a blog post.
Those transmission speeds would mean that an entire 640MB CD could be downloaded in five seconds, or a standard 4GB DVD in half a minute. At such speeds, users could have real-time streaming of ultra-high definition video, 3D movies or games, it said.
The transmissions used in the test were made at the ultra-high 28GHz frequency, which offers far more bandwidth than the 800MHz frequencies used for some 4G networks in the UK and elsewhere. High frequencies can carry more data, but have the disadvantage that they generally can be blocked by buildings and lose intensity over longer distances.
Niri points out though that standards have yet to be agreed – but that growing data use means it may happen more quickly than previous generations of mobile connectivity. "It takes a couple of years to develop and agree the best way to do this, and then one or two years to set the standards in committees," he said. "And then it takes another two or three years to deliver the systems on chips and do the testing." He thinks the standard could be agreed between 2015 and 2017, with commercial rollouts beginning in 2020.
If Samsung's antenna systems form the basis of part of the standard, its patents would generate a consistent revenue stream through licensing to companies implementing 5G. Its patents already form part of the 3G and 4G/LTE standards.