- Asked 2/22
- 2079 Bhadra · 2+2 marks
- 2079 Chaitra · 2+2 marks
Forward/reverse channel and 5G versus 4G
Short answer
Forward channel carries base station to mobile; reverse channel carries mobile to base station, for example GSM 935-960 MHz downlink and 890-915 MHz uplink. 5G differs from 4G in peak rate up to 20 Gbps, about 1 ms latency, mmWave, massive MIMO and beamforming, network slicing, and support for eMBB, URLLC and mMTC.
Define forward and reverse channel. How 5G will be different from 4G mobile communication?
Forward and reverse channel
- Forward channel (downlink): the radio channel used to carry information from the base station to the mobile user. Example: in GSM-900 the forward band is 935–960 MHz.
- Reverse channel (uplink): the radio channel used to carry information from the mobile user to the base station. Example: in GSM-900 the reverse band is 890–915 MHz.
Both directions contain voice (traffic) channels and control channels. The control channels (forward control channel and reverse control channel) carry call set-up, paging and access messages.
How 5G differs from 4G
| Feature | 4G (LTE-A) | 5G (NR) |
|---|---|---|
| Peak data rate | ~1 Gbps | up to 20 Gbps |
| Latency | ~10 ms | ~1 ms |
| Spectrum | below 6 GHz | sub-6 GHz + mmWave (24–100 GHz) |
| Antennas | MIMO up to 8×8 | Massive MIMO (64+ elements), beamforming |
| Device density | ~10⁵/km² | ~10⁶/km² |
| Core | EPC, hardware based | Service-based, cloud-native, SDN/NFV, network slicing |
| Use cases | Mobile broadband | eMBB, URLLC, mMTC (IoT) |
5G also uses flexible numerology (subcarrier spacing 15–240 kHz) and small cells to serve many more users with lower energy per bit.
✓ Answer checked by Claude Opus 5.5 (high effort)
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