Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/978458
12 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2018 Feature by Dan Feinberg I-CONNECT007 We are about to begin the transition from the present cellular standard 4G LTE to the next generation, 5G. As in the past, most peo- ple will wonder, "What does 5G mean to me, and what is LTE anyway?" After all, if you can make your connection reliably and you can send and receive data at reasonable speeds, why should you really care? Many of you will not, and some will only care because the latest mobile device has become a status symbol; but all of us will gain a significant data communi- cation speed increase when we get access to 5G networks and compatible devices, and our world will begin to change rapidly. If you are interested in the Internet of Things (IoT), you ain't seen nothing yet! To get a better understanding of what 5G is going to mean, let's take a quick look back at the history of mobile communications. In the '70s, if you wanted to communi- cate with someone who was not in your pres- ence (and you were not near a land line), you had to use a mobile plain old telephone ser- vice (POTS) network. This service was first of- fered by AT&T in the late '40s and was called a mobile telephone service (MTS). These were push-to-talk systems; one person would hold in the microphone button and speak and then say "over" and then release the mic button, and the other person would have his turn. If you wanted to communicate from your car, you could try to get a mobile phone, but as each area had only very limited communica- tions receiver/transmitters to communicate with mobile phone users, the number of de- vices it could service without the devices in- terfering with each other was extremely limit- ed. This was basically mono communications (half-duplex) rather than cellular as we know it today. The waiting list to get mobile phone access was literally years long. Of course, there was ham radio two-way communications as well as range-limited citi- zens band (CB radio); these also required tak- ing turns to talk. I tried all of these. I tried to