Ericsson and IBM announced today a collaboration to jointly research phased-array antenna designs for 5G to provide data speeds orders of magnitude faster than what is available currently. Ericsson believes that adoption of the next generation 5G standard will begin in 2020, so new technologies will need to be explored now in order to be in place to support the major rollout.

According to Ericsson, companies will research phased-array antenna techniques to develop prototype systems that will serve more mobile users, enable a multitude of new services on the same frequency, as well as offer data speeds that are orders of magnitude faster than today.

The phased-array design allows for more directional antennas that are electrically-steerable and will have significant weight and flexibility advantages over existing mechanical antennas. The outcome of these technological advances will integrate on the order of a hundred antennas and radios on a single chip smaller than a credit card in size, greatly facilitating the use of these technologies for high-capacity small cells in indoor spaces and dense downtown areas.

According to the June issue of the Ericsson Mobility Report, by 2019 there will be a ten-time growth in mobile data traffic and the 200 million M2M devices in use at the end of 2013 will grow by three to four times, before 5G even arrives.