Provider gets ‘5g’ with 3.6Gbit/s working in a moving car

The South Korean provider SK Telecom has got ‘5g’ working at a speed of 3.6Gbit/s in a fast-moving car. It is a technique that will probably come in the 5G standard and that works at 28GHz.

The provider partnered with network equipment maker Ericsson and car manufacturer BMW to test ‘mmWave’ in the 28GHz band, where a car drove over a test track at 170 kilometers per hour, SK Telecom reports. Making the technology work in a moving object is essential for a mobile network.

The test stands out because mmWave works with beam tracking, where the transmitter tracks the location of the receiver and only sends the waves there. Cell towers of currently used mobile networks do not use this and send their signal through the air without recognizing devices beforehand. Tracking the location of the car is done with image recognition. As a result, the companies achieved a peak speed of 3.6Gbit/s.

Many carriers and network companies are testing with 5g. The standard, which will be set this year, will probably consist of a patchwork of techniques. In addition to advanced variants of the current 4G at low frequencies, there will probably also be techniques that work at 28GHz or even higher than that.

Beam tracking made visible with an Oculus Rift