Cellular standard of the future

5G is considered a key technology for Industry 4.0 and autonomous driving, and the bases for this have largely been co-developed in Dresden. The TU Dresden (the only University of Excellence in central Germany), and the 5G Lab Germany in particular, is the nerve centre for research into the new mobile communications standard, which is able to achieve latencies of less than a millisecond. 5G is also set to achieve a data rate 100 times higher than that of LTE networks, enable robust radio communication, be able to transfer over ten gigabits per second, and consume considerable less electricity than current technologies. The IoT, automated driving, smart grids and smart living cannot exist without 5G.

Over 600 experts have been working with ten industry partners in this network on the mobile communications of the future since as early as 2014. Coupled with this is some excellent groundwork conducted by Prof Gerhard Fettweis, who, at his Vodafone endowed chair, developed technologies such as LTE Advanced, a mobile-communications standard of the fourth generation (4G) and an extension of LTE, which enables higher data-transfer rates to be achieved. In other words, an optimum basis for Robot Valley to define the worldwide standards for 5G mobile technology in future.