Samsung definitely hasn’t been hiding its ambitions related to the upcoming fifth generation of wireless networks. The multinational tech giant is aspiring to be one of the top names in the 5G business and is doing its best to come up with infrastructure that is superior to that of its competitors. A couple of days ago, the company revealed that it’s now one step closer to achieving that goal. Namely, the South Korean consumer electronics and cell equipment manufacturer announced that it has managed to develop wireless communications technology which allows it to physically miniaturize its existing 5G base stations and devices.
More specifically, Samsung designed and manufactured a miniature antenna that’s less than 1 mm thick and allows for integration of basic antenna functions into device cases. In addition to that, the company came up with a new power amplifier design which is significantly more efficient than the current crop of similar ultra-high frequency devices. Samsung claims its amplifier boasts over twice the output power of competing creations and is over 50% more energy efficient than them. As Samsung’s representatives revealed, they had issues with commercialization of their previously developed 5G base stations and devices which prompted them to improve their technology. The previously demonstrated hardware was generally working as intended but was big and bulky while the latest advancements will allegedly allow for significant physical downsizing of infrastructure. These advancements are compatible with pretty much every crucial piece of hardware required for 5G communications, i.e. communications modules for chipsets utilizing the 28 GHz band and base stations themselves.
The 5G miniaturization efforts are important because the technology itself relies on numerous short range high-frequency transmissions to vastly improve the connection speed of the currently available 4G wireless communications. In other words, the next generation of wireless technology will likely require more base stations than its predecessor so making these stations as light and small as possible will certainly allow for faster adoption. Of course, 5G is still relatively far away from being a reality. The technology still doesn’t have a fully defined standard and latest projections claim that one won’t be defined before June of 2017, while the first phase of actual standardization process won’t be completed prior to mid-2018.