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48 PCB007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2019 to also allow data transmission. In addition, it greatly increased security, making your calls much more difficult to hack. The third-generation (3G) was aimed at both telephony and data transmission in its design and became widely deployed in the early 2000s. The fourth-generation (4G and 4G LTE, or long-term evolution, and improve- ments to the original 4G have continued to be- come available) dating to the 2010s was built for data transmission and supports telephony only through data packets (voice-over-LTE and voice-over-internet protocol, or VoIP). Each new generation introduced higher data rates and new features to the public. 5G Advantages 5G is truly a giant leap; it makes possible quantum-level advances and features. Obvious- ly, it will be much faster than its predecessors and far more efficient. But what difference does "faster" mean for voice communications? Will you even notice if you hear the voice/response of whomever you are speaking with one or two milliseconds faster? Of course not. In fact, you will probably notice that the new phones will be labeled as +5G, meaning that the cellular phone communications are still using 4G, and the rest may be 5G, depending on advances made in the next few years. However, 5G will be used by the affected industries and devices to enable much faster response times using enhanced speed and bandwidth. Upload and download speeds will be significantly faster. On a cellphone or an online-connected de- vice, the advances that the average user will notice will include: being able to video chat in 4K or higher resolution with no noticeable lag; being able to download a file, program, vid- eo, game, etc., in seconds rather than minutes (remember, before 3G, this often took hours); and a real-time response when using augment- ed reality (AR), which adds to the real world rather than replacing it like virtual reality does. You will be able to stream movies in high reso- lution on your mobile device and game with a portable device in real-time. However, 5G is not just the next generation in mobile communications; because it has a far higher level of ultra-fast data transmission, it also will power a wide range of industries from AR-enabled service and self-help repair calls to healthcare, including enabling long- distance robotic surgery, education, and let's not forget autonomous transportation, enter- tainment, and so much more, all with mission- critical reliability and availability. Think about what real-time data transfer, command, and response communications can mean to the military. In our industry, the availability of ultra-low latency information exchange within the factory and even across different manufacturing locations globally will result in huge economic and technical change. It will allow moving from wired to wireless connections in many industrial envi- ronments. This will reduce installation costs and increase the flexibility of production pro- cesses across multiple manufacturing seg- ments and locations. 5G Technology Let's get "techy" for a little bit with some commentary regarding the bandwidth that makes 5G function and the differences from 4G. 5G uses bands in the 30–300 GHz range, which are rarely used today, while current 4G networks operate on frequencies below 6 GHz. Range testing of 5G has shown results approxi- mately 500+ meters from the tower. Using small cells, carriers using the milli- meter-wave band for transmission using 5G can improve the overall coverage area. With beamforming, and by using small cells to fo- cus the signal, it has been reported that there will be improved coverage with the expected 5G low latency. Remember, low latency is one 5G bandwidth spectrum.