Why and Where a 5G Cell Phone Signal Booster is Needed?
Before we get into the topic of 5G cell phone signal boosters, let’s have a quick view about what 5G can bring to us, the difference between 5G and 4G LTE, and the major factors about 5G.
What Can 5G Bring to Us?
5G is the 5th generation mobile network. It is a new global wireless standard after 1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. 5G enables a new kind of network that is designed to connect virtually everyone and everything together including machines, objects, and devices.
5G wireless technology is meant to deliver higher multi-Gbps peak data speeds, ultra-low latency, more reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, and a more uniform user experience to more users. Higher performance and improved efficiency empower new user experiences and connects new industries.
Broadly speaking, 5G is used across three main types of connected services, including enhanced mobile broadband, mission-critical communications, and the massive IoT. A defining capability of 5G is that it is designed for forward compatibility—the ability to flexibly support future services that are unknown today.
Enhanced mobile broadband
In addition to making our smartphones better, 5G mobile technology can usher in new immersive experiences such as VR and AR with faster, more uniform data rates, lower latency, and lower cost-per-bit.
Mission-critical communications
5G can enable new services that can transform industries with ultra-reliable, available, low-latency links like remote control of critical infrastructure, vehicles, and medical procedures.
Massive IoT
5G is meant to seamlessly connect a massive number of embedded sensors in virtually everything through the ability to scale down in data rates, power, and mobility—providing extremely lean and low-cost connectivity solutions.
What’s the Difference between 5G and 4G LTE?
Sure, as you can imagine, 5G is better than 4G. There are several reasons that 5G will be better than 4G:
• 5G is significantly faster than 4G
• 5G has more capacity than 4G
• 5G has significantly lower latency than 4G
• 5G is a unified platform that is more capable than 4G
• 5G uses spectrum better than 4G
5G is a unified platform that is more capable than 4G.
While 4G LTE focused on delivering much faster mobile broadband services than 3G, 5G is designed to be a unified, more capable platform that not only elevates mobile broadband experiences, but also supports new services such as mission-critical communications and the massive IoT. 5G can also natively support all spectrum types (licensed, shared, unlicensed) and bands (low, mid, high), a wide range of deployment models (from traditional macro-cells to hotspots), and new ways to interconnect (such as device-to-device and multi-hop mesh).
5G uses spectrum better than 4G.
5G is also designed to get the most out of every bit of spectrum across a wide array of available spectrum regulatory paradigms and bands—from low bands below 1 GHz, to mid bands from 1 GHz to 6 GHz, to high bands known as millimeter wave (mmWave).
5G is faster than 4G.
5G can be significantly faster than 4G, delivering up to 20 Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) peak data rates and 100+ Megabits-per-second (Mbps) average data rates.
5G has more capacity than 4G.
5G is designed to support a 100x increase in traffic capacity and network efficiency.
5G has lower latency than 4G.
5G has significantly lower latency to deliver more instantaneous, real-time access: a 10x decrease in end-to-end latency down to 1ms.
In summary, you can find the comparison of the major indicators between 4G and 5G as shown in the table below.
Eight Key Capabilities of 5G defined by ITU
The Major Factors about 5G
Spectrum is the core resource for wireless network. And a key factor about 5G is that it uses much higher and larger frequency bands as compared to 4G LTE and other cellular technologies of previous generations. To be specific, 5G frequency bands include two major frequency ranges, i.e., Sub-6 GHz (FR1) and mmWave (FR2). Sub-6 GHz refers to spectrum with frequencies below 6GHz. It’s the spectrum that will form the backbone of most carriers’ 5G network in the world, especially the frequency band 3.3GHz-4.2GHz within Sub-6 GHz range. MmWave spectrum is limited in its applications — it only covers very short ranges and densely populated areas in need of very high capacity and is currently expensive to implement.
5G Spectrum Overview
Why and Where a 5G Cell Signal Booster is Needed?
As illustrated above, 5G has much higher frequencies as compared to previous cellular technologies, which results in much shorter coverage area of a single base station, and much higher radio propagation loss in the air and through the obstacles.
In-building Coverage Comparison of 5G/4G/3G
According to SPM（Standard Propagation Model）analysis and test results, 4G LTE can penetrate two walls, C-Band 5G (e.g., 3.5GHz) can penetrate one wall, whereas 5G mmWave couldn’t penetrate a wall.
Signal Penetration Capability of Different Cellular Technologies
Therefore, if you need a good 5G signal coverage indoors, it’s most likely that an indoor 5G coverage solution is required. Now, it comes to a follow-up question: Should this solution be a 5G signal booster or any others? It depends. A 5G signal booster is suitable for scenarios of less than 5000㎡ without necessity to connect many broadband users, and where there is 5G signal outdoor. Examples of the ideal scenarios include apartment, house, small and medium office, business hall, shop, underground room, etc.
Want to know 5G signal coverage solutions for other scenarios? Read the article from Hocell blog: A Full Picture of 5G Indoor Coverage Solution
