University of Surrey achieves 5G speeds of 1Tbps during tests
How would you like a download speed of 1TB per sec on your smartphone? Sounds unbelievable, doesnt it! Researchers at University of Surrey have managed to achieve a breakneck speed of 1TB under test conditions, while testing Fifth Generation Mobile Telephone or 5G network in University of Surrey labs.
This was disclosed by Professor Rahim Tafazolli at the #V3 Enterprise Mobility Summit. Professor Rahim Tafazolli is the director of the 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) at University of Surrey and has been overseeing the 5G tests.
Prof.Rahim told V3 that, “it was the first time in the world that such speeds had been achieved, far faster than any other tests such as Samsung’s 7.5Gbps results.”
Explaining the working of 5GIC, the professor said that it had been researching on the latest technologies which can support 5G services. The technological innovations meant that the research team had been able to achieve the 1Tbps results. “We have developed 10 more breakthrough technologies and one of them means we can exceed 1Tbps wirelessly. This is the same capacity as fibre optics but we are doing it wirelessly,” he told V3.
Prof. Rahim said that the research team carried out the tests in lab conditions over a distance of 100 meters using transmitters and receivers build by them. He added that they will conduct test outside the university premises in late 2016 or early 2017 and hoped that they could hold a public demonstration in early 2018.
Hoping to stay ahead of other research teams from South Korea, Russia and Japan, the professor stated that, “We want to be the first in the world to show such high speeds.”
Ofcom believes that speeds of 50GB/s is possible on 5G networks when they are deployed commercially but 1TB seems a bit far fetched in the tough physical conditions outside the university test labs. But the professor does not think so, he says that this speed seems achievable provided they can come up with higher latency and reliability.
“An important aspect of 5G is how it will support applications in the future. We don’t know what applications will be in use by 2020, or 2030 or 2040 for that matter, but we know they will be highly sensitive to latency,” he said. “We need to bring end-to-end latency down to below one millisecond so that it can enable new technologies and applications that would just not be possible with 4G,” he added.
Though 5G is only on lab stage right now, commercial deployment of 5G networks will hopefully be started by the year 2020.
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