Migration from Microwave to Millimeter-wave for NextGeneration Mobile Communication Systems

Communications systems have continued to evolve after ground-breaking research works by various researchers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Mobile wireless communication networks due to their inherent advantages and the availability of ubiquitous broadband internet along with other technological developments in semiconductor science and the convergence of technology have continued to generate an insatiable demand for higher data rates. Since the bandwidth/frequency spectrum is finite and hence limited in availability to telecommunication operators, various techniques have been proffered as solutions to the capacity problem from the first to the fourth generations (1G – 4G). However, as the data explosion continues to the big-data age, there is a need to migrate from the utilization of the microwave frequencies to the millimeter-wave frequency to solve the capacity issue. This principle is the core behind the Fifth Generation (5G). This paper is therefore set to present the millimeter-wave technology and its contribution to the expectations for Next Generation Networks (NGN).