5G Road Map to Communication Revolution

*Evon Abu-Taieh, Issam H. Al Hadid and Ali Zolait*

## **Abstract**

The goal of this chapter is to give researchers, practitioners, and students a pedestal to get a comprehensive look at the new technology of communication named 5G. The chapter will present an introduction that shows the importance of 5G to the different uses of the Internet. Then, the chapter will present two essential aspects: (1) 5G research in academia and real world and (2) timeline of Gs. Then, the chapter will discuss three aspects of 5G which are, namely, (1) Regulations, (2) security, and (3) the 5 enabling Technologies. Then, the chapter will discuss the real-life case of South Korea mobile carrier.

**Keywords:** 5G, millimeter waves, small cells, massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO), beamforming, full duplex

### **1. Introduction**

The Internet is nonpareil like running water and electricity; it is a basic need in today's world. The influence of Internet on real life reached: Economics, politics, and social. Hence, it created an alternate reality for all factors in life: e-business, e-politics, social networks, e-learning, e-culture, security, Data Science, and Big Data.

In economics, the Internet created new type of trade, i.e., e-business and new products. Some of the e-business models ranged from e-payment, new tax rules, new currency, and borderless trading. New products are different products other than the physical and non-physical products. Non-physical products include movies, music, games, and computer programs. Internet created new trades that did not exist before ranging from delivery services of physical products like delivering food, cloths, etc. to delivering non-physical products like services. According to some reports, "online retail sales worldwide will exceed US\$3.4 Trillion" [1] while costs of the first year of online retailing ranges from \$644 to \$31,000 according to eCorner [1]. Others [2] stated that online spending is expected to reach 8.8% of total retail price increasing from 7.4% in 2016. Also, Gorlamandala [2] stated that UK has the highest retail e-commerce sales with 15.6% followed by China with 11.5%. Cross-border is an issue reported by Gorlamandala [2] listing China with \$245 million and Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, France, and Mexico as countries where e-commerce sale is in noticeable numbers. Another report by Deloitte [3] stated that Amazon.com ranked fourth as top 10 retailers in 2017 with \$118.573 million retail revenues with a growth of 25.3 and 36.8% retail revenue from foreign operations. Amazon in the report [3] jumped two places to number 4. The report stated "Amazon is a consistent performer in the Fastest 50, having featured in the Fastest

50 since FY2004" [3] and stated "The increase in unit sales was mainly a result of Amazon's efforts to reduce prices for customers, shipping offers, increased in-stock inventory availability, and more product variety" [3, 4]. Even Walmart is competing with Amazon over online retailing. Walmart credited the increase in sales to integrate online system with traditional sales stating "Walmart has credited its efforts to integrate its store and digital businesses so that they feed off each other." [4]. Walmart online sales have risen to 63% [4]. Furthermore, according to Wahba [5], Walmart has acquired Flipkart.com with \$16 billion deal, also teaming up with Google and Microsoft and Rakuten, JD.com.

*Social networks* include Facebook (2.3 billion active users [6]), Instagram (1 billion [7]), VKontakte, QZone (572 million [6], Odnoklassniki, twitter (330 million [6]), Snapchat (294 million [6]), Reddit (330 million [6], Linkedin (310 million [6]), and YouTube (2 Billion [6]). Communication software include Google Duo, FaceTime, Skype WhatsApp (1600 million [6]), Facebook Messenger (1.3 billion active users [6]), Viber (260 million [6]), WeChat (1112 million [6]), and QQ (823 million [6]). All allowed connectivity and trading views in cheaper and more accessible manner. Furthermore, most of these applications are for free and allow communication for free. Still, they compensate their cost with advertising using some sort of profiling to deliver advertisement message.

*Politics* was affected by the cyberspace. Best example is the effect of Facebook on politics. In fact in a study by Levy [8], the researcher stated "In the measured period, stories related to politics accounted for 36% of interactions among the top 100 Facebook stories" [9], while topics like soft/general interest (17%), death (11%), science (10%), hard/general (8%), and economics (6%) followed. In fact, some revolutions were based on Facebook interaction like 2011-Jan revolution of Egypt. Another example is the American presidency race in 2016 and the Russian INTERFERENCE issue.

All the previous indicates that Internet is becoming an essential part of life and the number of Internet users is increasing rapidly. In addition, according to GSMA [10], there are 5,177,676,750 unique mobile subscribers in the world with 9,418,683,350 mobile connections. The backbone of the Internet is communication. The communication technology must meet the demand for communication. End users need more communication speed and reliability. Hence, there is a need to develop communication technology. As such, the development of 5G mobile communication technology is a promising one.

5G is the fifth generation of mobile technology that promises increased speed and lower latency, higher capacity, and higher reliability capacity [11]. 5G will be reflected in a number of today's technologies such as smart cities, connected infrastructure, wearable computers, autonomous driving, seamless virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, remote robots, drones, and Internet of Machines and Things (IoMT) [12, 13]. Yet to implement 5G technologies: there are three challenges that the implementation faces: Spectrum, infrastructure, and regulations. In the next two sections, the chapter will present two essential aspects: (1) 5G research in academia and real world and (2) timeline of Gs.
