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antennas and prototype 5G phones will consume
two to three times more power than their 4G
counterparts.
• Heat. More power consumption means more heat
generation, which requires more heat dissipation
to avoid damaging components.
• Component complexity. 5G components are
more complex, with more filters and amplifiers
to operate at more frequencies and with more
complex waveforms. This complexity introduces
risks of creating larger components when space is
already at a premium, especially in user equipment.
• Component density and compact designs.
Packing more complex components into more
compact designs increases component density,
which makes heat dissipation more difficult.
These challenges can have a cascading effect of design
constraints. For example, in a device like a mobile phone,
if components take up more room, there is less room for a
battery, so the battery must be smaller. But, if the device
needs more power, smaller batteries mean less available
power, which in turn means a shorter service time between
charges. Many of these heat, power consumption, and
component size challenges are being addressed through
new techniques and materials—for example, through:
• Transceivers that employ new phase-shifting
techniques—which allow more accurate beam
steering, tighter beam resolution, near-zero gain
variations across a large MIMO antenna array,
higher data rates, and package size reductions
through components that share circuit elements—
eliminating the need for switches,
• More efficient high-frequency power amplifiers
that use gallium nitride (GaN) transistors and a
variety of techniques for reducing nonlinearization
when operating at less than full power, and
• New techniques for developing reconfigurable
and tunable wideband filters that are compact and
cost-effective.
Conclusion
5G communications are here, and initial deployments
have already begun, but clearly a lot of engineering work
remains to be done before 5G technology can deliver
all the possibilities that its specification implies. Initial
deployments focusing on FR1 (<6GHz) will be the proving
ground for new 5G systems and components going
forward.
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