How fast is 5G?
We hear a lot about 5G these days as competition between network equipment vendors, operators and chipsets manufacturers is heating up to be the one to impose its views on how 5G should be standardized. But how fast can 5G be?
Here is a summary of 2016 press releases found over the Internet which describe their 5G tests scnenarios and the maximum peak throughput that could be achieved (the summary is focusing on the spectrum used):
| Date | Country | Operator | Vendor | Peak Speed | Band, Bandwidth | Technical Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12-Feb | Japan | University | Panasonic | 100 Gbps | 300 GHz | Terahertz radios |
| 18-Feb | Sweden | DoCoMo | Ericsson | 25 Gbps | MU-MIMO, Beam Tracking | |
| 3-Jun | USA | Sprint | Nokia | 2.3 Gbps | 73 GHz | Beam Switching |
| 6-Jun | USA | AT&T | Ericsson | 10 Gbps | 15 GHz | |
| 15-Jun | USA | Sprint | Ericsson | 4 Gbps | 15 GHz | 50 feet, gNB to UE |
| 11-Aug | USA | AT&T | Ericsson | 14 Gbps | 15 GHz | Multi-User MIMO |
| 20-Sep | USA | T-Mobile | Ericsson | 12 Gbps | 28 GHz | 2-directional Beam Steering |
| 20-Sep | Australia | Telstra | Ericsson | 20 Gbps | ?, 800 MHz | CA, 4×4 MIMO, 256 QAM |
| 12-Oct | Australia | Vodafone | Nokia | 4.84 Gbps | 4.5 GHz, 200 MHz | 8×8 MIMO and 64 QAM |
| 14-Oct | Sweden | Telia | Ericsson | 15 Gbps | 15 GHz, 800 MHz | |
| 26-Oct | Japan | DoCoMo | Fujitsu | 11 Gbps | 4.6 GHz | Multiple Base Stations, 4 UEs |
| 2-Nov | Singapore | StarHub | Nokia | 4.3 Gbps | 3 to 30 GHz | Nokia AirScale, 5G cmWave |
| 12-Nov | Korea | LG Uplus | Huawei | 31 Gbps | 28 GHz | MIMO |
| 16-Nov | Australia | Optus | Huawei | 35 Gbps | 73 GHz | Polar code |
| 17-Nov | Japan | DoCoMo | Huawei | 11.29 Gbps | 4.5 GHz, 200 MHz | MIMO, Polar Code, SCMA, 23 UEs, 64 TRX |
| 19-Nov | Japan | DoCoMo | Ericsson | 10 Gbps | 15 GHz | MIMO |
Although this summary focuses on throughput, in most of the cases, a latency of 1ms to ~5ms is also announced, which is a great improvement compared to 4G performance.
Disclaimer: these are theorical tests aimed at showing the maximum speed in a press release, the peak throughput often refers to the gNB total throughput with mutliple users, and in other cases, the user and the site are only of a few meters away.
