5G: ‘Race to faster Internet’ or ‘March towards Self destruction’!!
Mobile Tower to Data Call: How Phone works
Imagine yourself on the street in a hot summer night, body covered with sweat, unable to contact your cab driver when you are already late for your flight, I am sure people living near equator can feel the pain. At that moment we don’t understand that enormous work that has been done to connect that call, within milliseconds.
When you speak into a cellphone, a tiny microphone in the handset converts the up-and-down sounds of your voice into a corresponding up-and-down pattern of electrical signals. A microchip inside the phone turns these signals into strings of numbers.
The radio wave carrying these numbers races through the air at the speed of light until it reaches the nearest Telecom tower. The tower receives the signals and passes them on to its base station. From the base station, the calls are routed onward to their destination. Calls made to a cellphone on a different network or a land line follows a lengthier path. They may have to be routed into the main telephone network before they can reach their ultimate destination. Both data & voice travels through different channels.
1/2/3 & More …G Network:
As the human evolved, so did his needs & hence his desires to get more & more data in a faster manner. So came the concept of G.
The “G” is short for generation, as the G progressed features like SMS/MMS, Data, Video Calling, more data, faster data came to existence. In short, mobile phones got converted from Luxury to Desire & then Desire to necessity. Today arrangements like ‘Good news about long wait for birth of your child through post card’, ‘Morning new paper’, ‘New year wishes’, ‘Money transfer’, ‘Radio’ etc. have become obsolete, all thanks to INTERNET!!
With this significant enhancement in Technology & digital era more & more people got exposed to mobile phones, which led to multi fold increase in demand. Below charts shows mobile subscription/100 users worldwide.
As the population grew, number of mobile phones users progressed, consequently increased the amount of data.
Infrastructure behind the call: A Telecom Tower
A typical telecom tower consists of two types of equipment:
1) Active Equipment 2) Passive Equipment
All operator equipment like BTS, Microwave Antenna, GSM Antenna etc. are called Active equipment. Equipment which are used to give power supply to Active equipment are called Passive equipment like Power Interface Unit, SMPS, battery Bank, Diesel Generator, Air conditioner etc.
To give power supply to Active equipment three power sources are typically used in a telecom tower: 1) Grid Electricity Supply 2) Battery Bank 3) Diesel Generator in same order. If Grid Supply is cut off, site will automatically go to Battery Supply. When battery gets discharged then site goes to DG (Diesel Generator), meaning all equipment is powered through DG.
Power Consumption: Some Electrical terms & Facts
- Power is measured in KW & power consumed in measured in KWh for reference a 1.5 Tn Air Conditioner consumes 1.2KW power.
- Battery Bank capacity is measured in AH (Ampere-Hour), maximum amount of current it can supply for 1 hour.
- DG uses Electricity generation mechanism through fuel & generates power
- In KWh. Fuel consumed is measured in CPH (Consumption per Hour) which depends upon connected load, DG Capacity & environmental factors.
- A typical telecom tower consisting of 2–3 BTS, Battery Bank, AC consumes
3 Ltrs of Diesel per hour. - Every tower in India runs almost 5 Hrs. with DG & rest with Grid Supply & Battery backup.
Telecom Towers: Indian Portfolio
There are close to 4,50,000 telecom towers in India at present and are estimated to increase with launch of newer technologies. Below mentioned graphs depicts the tentative YoY growth in number of towers in India.
With the current availability of electricity supply in India, existing Telecom towers use close to 2 Bn ltrs of Diesel every year which makes Telecom second highest consuming sectors of fuel after Railways.
Earlier Gs vs 5G: What more & what not?
5G is the newest, but yet-to-be-released, mobile network that will ultimately replace the current 4G technology by providing a number of improvements in speed, coverage, and reliability.The primary focus and reason for needing an upgraded network is to support the growing number of devices that demand internet access, many of them requiring so much bandwidth in order to function normally that 4G simply doesn’t cut it anymore.
Advantages & Applications of 5G: More Bandwidth Means Faster Speed
Slow connection will be a problem of the past as people using a 5G network will be able to browse the web, download files, and even stream video at blistering speeds. Because of the increased bandwidth, people will be able to use more of it without crowding out other users. With more of the network dedicated to each individual smart device, smart devices will be able to run faster than ever before.5G will use different kinds of antennas, operate on different radio spectrum frequencies, connect many more devices to the internet, minimize delays, and deliver ultra-fast speeds. Given the stark differences in how they perform, it’s clear that 5G will pave a new road to the future for mobile devices and communication, but what does that really mean for you?
Where 4G will fail at providing all the data needs to a growing number of mobile devices, 5G will open the airways for more internet-enabled tech like smart traffic lights, wireless sensors, mobile wearable’s, and car-to-car communication, self-driven cars, IoT.
And here’s the catch:
When technology progressed to 4G networks, the cells were producing more bandwidth, meaning the coverage radius of each cell was smaller. People may have noticed that their coverage may drop more often than on their 3G network. As the 5G network gets rolled out, this trend will continue. More cell towers will be required to produce this immense bandwidth because the cells are not able to cover as much space as a 3G or 4G cells. Because more cells will need to be rolled out5G will be using higher frequencies (up to millimeter waves) so the coverage area is smaller and more are needed. In initial stages 5G will be an “add on” to 4G. So existing 4G infrastructures provide the coverage, but as the demand will grow additional 5G antennas will be required to cater the mass.
Attached figure depicts the frequency vs. range of mobile signal. It’s clearly evident that with increase in frequency, coverage area decreases exponentially.
So there will be four factors contributing to the increase in number of towers:
• Decrease in coverage due to higher frequency of 5G Signals
• Increasing mobile penetration of Mobile Internet
• Technological advances in every sector leading to more mobile real time data requirement
• Poor electrification in developing economies
This increase in number of towers will cause increase in Diesel consumption if electricity is not sufficient. (Which is present situation in most developing counties). Wherever electricity is sufficient, towers will use electricity produced by burning of fossil fuel & we all know how much %age of electricity is produced by non-conventional resources. There is a proverb in Hindi “ Ek taraf kua hai toh dusri taraf khai, bach ke jana namumkin hai !!”,means we are between the devil & deep sea. There is no escape to this dual apathy.
Conclusion:
After multiple failed attempts, Mr. Henry Ford completed the prototype of first car, but now people don’t even want to drive that, they are looking for driver less cars. Man is so laced in race to comfort, that he has started building devices & developing technologies that is leading him to path of destruction where finish line is ultimate devastation.
Correctly said by Pierre Boiste: “A human being is an animal with limited abilities & limitless desires…”
Mobile Operators said “Enter the world of speed” & Weee stepped in, package after package, plan after plan, 1 Rupee/Mins, 10 Paisa/Mins, ‘Buy a new SIM and get free data for a month’ etc. etc.
They said enter the world of speed, but really are phone & Internet making us swift or slower. Choice is yours!!
