5G is still a vague technology, but the ITU is defining exactly what it should be capable of and how it will work.
While there are numerous organisations working on the development of 5G, the specifics of how it will work and what it will be capable of are still being ironed out.
As we get closer and closer to the likely commercial availability in 2020 these specifics should become more defined and the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) is working to ensure that happens sooner rather than later.
While the ITU is just one of the groups working on 5G, it’s playing a key role in defining what 5G will look like and is already working on studying the network standardisation requirements of 5G.
The ITU also recently defined an overall vision and roadmap for 5G as a first step towards defining the future of mobile data, with goals including data rates of up to 20Gbps, which is enough to download a 25GB UHD movie in just 10 seconds.
Other goals include reduced energy consumption and support for huge numbers of devices to be able to connect simultaneously in a small area.
The roadmap (above) sees it finalising the technical performance requirements of 5G and proposing and evaluating solutions over the years between now and 2020, with the work set to be carried out under the name ‘IMT-2020’.
The next step in this work is to establish detailed technical performance requirements, evaluation criteria and methodology for the radio systems which will support 5G, which, when implemented in 2020, will allow for extremely high definition video services and real time low latency applications, as well as supporting the growth of the Internet of Things.
Ideas will be workshopped towards the end of 2017, with independent external evaluation carried out between 2018-2020. The process is scheduled to be completed in 2020, when a draft new ITU-R Recommendation with detailed specifications for the new radio interfaces will be submitted for approval within the ITU-R (International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector).
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