Look Out, 4G LTE -- 5G Trials Set for 2013

From DailyTech: If you recently picked up a smartphone like the Samsung Galaxy S3 or iPhone 5 and reveled at the "lightning-fast" 4G LTE network, be prepared -- the next best thing is already on its way.

According to Giga OM, 5G network connectivity will begin testing in the United Kingdom next year. The testing will take place at the University of Surrey's Centre for Communication Systems Research (CCSR) in the UK.

The project is expected to cost around £35 million ($56 million USD), where about £11.6 million will come from the UK government and the other £24 million will be provided by a group of tech companies, including Samsung, Huawei, Fukitsu Laboratories Europe, Rohde-Schwarz, Telefonica Europe and AIRCOM International.

The CCSR has been working on 5G for a few years, but it is just now coming together to work with the other companies to make 5G a reality. According to Professor Rahim Tafazolli, head of CCSR, the new network will be spectrum-efficient and energy-efficient. It will also be faster, with cell speeds bumped up to a capacity of 10Gbps.

"Mobile data traffic is increasing exponentially year-on-year," said Tafazolli. "The amount of spectrum that we have now is not sufficient to carry all the traffic. We are soon going to run out of capacity, even with LTE, unless there is a huge amount of spectrum made available -- and if we are doubling traffic every year, then even twice the spectrum [that is currently available] is not sufficient.

"We have developed many technologies that are suitable for 5G using computer simulation and mathematical analysis and what this test bed allows us is to integrate all these technologies together and optimise them end-to-end and take them to standards afterwards. We are looking at the processors, protocols, algorithms and techniques...we won't try to optimise the hardware implementation -- that is something industry will do. We have developed the know-how."

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