Showing posts with label 5G. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 5G. Show all posts

Sunday 4 October 2015

Updates from the 3GPP RAN 5G Workshop - Part 2

I have finally got round to having a look at some more presentations on 5G from the recently concluded 3GPP RAN 5G Workshop. Part 1 of the series is here.
Panasonic introduced this concept of Sub-RAT's and Cradle-RAT's. I think it should be obvious from the picture above what they mean but you can refer to their presentation here for more details.


Ericsson has provided a very detailed presentation (but I assume a lot of slides are backup slides, only for reference). They have introduced what they call as "NX" (No compatibility constraints). This is in line to what other vendors have referred to as well that above 6GHz, for efficiency, new frame structures and waveforms would serve best. Their slides are here.



Nokia's proposal is that in the phase 1 of 5G, the 5G Access point (or 5G NodeB) would connect to the 4G Evolved Packet Core (EPC). In phase 2, both the LTE and the 5G (e)NodeB's would connect to the 5G core. Their presentation is available here.

Before we move on to the next one, I should mention that I am aware of some research that is underway, mostly by universities where they are exploring an architecture without a centralised core. The core network functionality would be distributed and some of the important data would be cached on the edge. There will be challenges to solve regarding handovers and roaming; also privacy and security issues in the latter case.
I quite like the presentation by GM research about 5G in connected cars. They make a very valid point that "Smartphones and Vehicles are similar but not the same. The presentation is embedded below.



Qualcomm presented a very technical presentation as always, highlighting that they are thinking about various future scenarios. The picture above, about phasing is in a way similar to the Ericsson picture. It also highlights what we saw in part 1, that mmW will arrive after WRC-19, in R16. Full presentation here.


The final presentation we are looking is by Mitsubishi. Their focus is on Massive MIMO which may become a necessity at higher frequencies. As the frequency goes higher, the coverage goes down. To increase the coverage area, beamforming can be used. The more the antennas, the more focused the beam could be. They have also proposed the use of SC-FDMA in DL. Their presentation is here and also embedded below.



Monday 21 September 2015

Updates from the 3GPP RAN 5G Workshop - Part 1

3GPP held a 5G Workshop in Phoenix last week. 550 delegates and over 70 presentations contributed to the discussion, which covered the full range of requirements that will feed TSG RAN work items for the next five years. I will eventually look at all the presentations and highlight the ones that I find interesting as a part of this blog. Due to the vast number of presentations, I will split them into a few blog posts.

Lets start with the chairman summary. The chair highlighted three high level use cases that 5G needs to address (This has been highlighted in many presentations, see here for example):
  • Enhanced Mobile Broadbandare 
  • Massive Machine Type Communications
  • Ultra-reliable and Low Latency Communications
As can be seen in the picture above, 3GPP is planning to split the 5G work into two phases. Phase 1 (Rel-15) will look at a subset of requirements that are important for the commercial needs of the day. Phase 2 (Rel-16) will look at more features, use cases, detailed requirements, etc.

Here is the chair summary of the workshop:




The presentation (RWS-150002) from Motorola/Lenovo highlighted the need to handle different spectrum. For sub-6GHz, the existing air interface could work with slight modifications. For spectrum between 6GHz and 30GHz, again a similar air interface like 4G may be good enough but for above 30GHz, there is a need for new one die to phase noise.

The presentation by CATT or China Academy of Telecommunication Technology (RWS-150003) is quite interesting and is embedded below. They also propose Pattern Division Multiple Access (PDMA).




Orange (RWS-150004) has definitely put a thought into what good 5G would be. Their presentation is embedded below too:




The presentation from Huawei (RWS-150006) introduced the concept of Unified Air Interface, UAI.



They presentation also explains the concept of Adaptive Frame structures and RAN slicing very well. For those who may be wondering, uMTC stands for ultra-reliable MTC and mMTC stands for massive MTC. RAN slicing enables the RAN to be partitioned such that a certain amount of carriers are always dedicated to a certain services independently of other services. This ensures that the service in the slice is always served reliably.

The final presentation is the vision and priorities by 5GPPP as follows:



Monday 14 September 2015

3GPP Release-13 whitepapers and presentations

With 3GPP Release-13 due early/mid next year, there has been a flurry of presentations and whitepapers on this topic. This post provides some of these. I will try and maintain a list of whitepapers/presentations as part of this post as and when released.

1. June 2015: LTE Release 13 and road to 5G - Presented by Dino Flore, Chairman of 3GPP RAN, (Qualcomm Technologies Inc.)



2. Sep 2015: Executive Summary - Inside 3GPP Release 13 by 4G Americas



3. June 2015: Mobile Broadband Evolution Towards 5G: 3GPP Rel-12 & Rel-13 and Beyond by 4G Americas

4. April 2015: LTE release 13 – expanding the Networked Society by Ericsson


Saturday 5 September 2015

HetNets and Ultra Dense Networks



When I did my 5G presentation back in Feb., I explained about Ultra Dense Networks (UDN) that will be a main feature of future traffic hotspots. I have also blogged about Qualcomm having tested 1000 small cells in a square km. Some operators are already running out of spectrum with traditional deployments in hotspots. They are already making their cells smaller (but not yet using Small cells) thereby having less users in each cell. This may not be enough so the approach likely to be taken is:

  • Offload to WiFi
  • Aggregate WiFi with LTE (different approaches including LTE-U, LAA and LWA)
  • Use Small cells and C-RAN
  • Multi technology Carrier Aggregation
  • Beamforming (and massive MIMO)


The above picture is from a presentation (embedded below) by ZTE in the LTE World Summit. Its a good attempt to show different technologies, the year they are expected to go mainstream, whether they are TDD or FDD and if they will form part of 5G.

Anyway, here is the presentation. There is some interesting information on C-RAN, D-RAN results and fronthaul too.



Tuesday 4 August 2015

The Importance of License Exempt Frequency Bands


Some of you may be aware that I am also a Technical Programme Manager with the UK Spectrum Policy Forum. Recently we published a whitepaper that we had commissioned to Plum consulting on "Future use of Licence Exempt Radio Spectrum". It is an interested read not only for spectrum experts but also for people trying to understand the complex world of spectrum.

The report is very well written. Here are a few extracts in purple:

Licence exempt frequency bands are those that can be used by certain applications without the need for prior authorisation or an individual right of use. This does not mean that they are not subject to regulation – use must still comply with pre-defined technical rules to minimise the risk of interference. Most licence exempt bands are harmonised throughout Europe and are shared with other services or applications, such as radars or industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) equipment. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are probably the most familiar examples of mass-market licence exempt wireless applications, but the bands support many other consumer devices, such as cordless phones, doorbells, car key fobs, central heating controllers, baby monitors and intruder alarms. Looking to the future, licence exempt bands are likely to be a key enabler of wireless machine to machine (M2M) communication applications.

Key benefits of licence exempt bands include:
  • For end-users:
    • Greater convenience and flexibility by avoiding the need for lengthy runs of cable in home and work environments
    • Ability to connect mobile devices to a fixed broadband network, reducing dependence on the mobile network and potentially saving costs both for the service provider and the end-user
    • Enhanced convenience, safety and security, e.g. through installation of low cost wireless alarm systems or ability to unlock vehicles remotely rather than fumbling with keys
  • For equipment vendors and operators:
    • Facilitating market entry – there is no need to acquire a licence to deploy a service
    • Enabling niche applications or services to be addressed quickly and cheaply using existing technology and spectrum – this has been particularly effective in serving new machine to machine (M2M) applications in areas such as health, transport and home automation.
    • Providing certainty about spectrum access – there is no need to compete or pay for spectrum access (though the collective nature of spectrum use means quality of service cannot be guaranteed)
    • The ability to extend the reach of fixed communication networks, by providing wireless local area connectivity in homes, businesses and at public traffic hotspots.
The two most notable drawbacks are the inability to guarantee quality of service and the more limited geographic range that is typically available (reflecting the lower power limits that apply to these bands). Licence exempt wireless applications cannot claim protection from interference arising from other users or radio services. They operate in shared frequency bands and must not themselves cause harmful interference to other radio services.

From a regulator’s perspective, licence exempt bands can be more problematic than licensed bands in terms of refarming spectrum, since it is difficult to prevent the continued deployment of legacy equipment in the bands or to monitor effectively their utilisation. There is also generally no control over numbers and / or location of devices, which can make sharing difficult and limits the amount of spectrum that can be used in this way.

In Europe, regulation of licence exempt bands is primarily dealt with at an international level by European institutions. Most bands are fully harmonised, whereby free circulation of devices that comply with the relevant standards is effectively mandated throughout the EU. However some bands are subject to “soft” harmonisation, where the frequency limits and technical characteristics are harmonised but adoption of the band is left to national administrations to decide.

A key recommendation, which I think would be very interesting and useful would be: Promote further international harmonisation of licence exempt bands, in particular the recently identified 870 – 876 MHz and 915 – 921 MHz band that are likely to be critical for supporting future M2M demand growth in Europe.

Note that a similar sub-1GHz band has been recommended for 5G for M2M/IoT. The advantage for low frequencies is that the coverage area is very large, suitable for devices with low date rates. Depending on how the final 5G would be positioned, it may well use the license exempt bands, similar to the LAA/LTE-U kind of approach maybe.

The whitepaper is embedded below and is available to download from here:




Tuesday 16 June 2015

Have researchers moved on past 5G on to 6G Wireless?


As I am active on multiple social networks including blogs, twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc., Its always tricky to be able to share information from one on to another. Some time back I tweeted about the 6G research that seems to have started according to an article in FT.

While I had a few retweets and interactions, I realised that its always challenging to search the tweets so I decided to add this in the blog post, always easier to look it up.

So the FT Article states that:

Even as 5G remains a distant prospect for most mobile users, some scientists have already begun to work on plans for 6G services in the future.

To an extent, terms such as 4G and 5G have become as much about marketing equipment as any single technology breakthrough, with incremental improvements to technical specifications often arbitrarily given names such as 3.5G or 4.5G.

But that has not stopped people from thinking about what 6G could look like — and in the UK at least, the prediction is for a “quantum” leap.

Britain has created a “national quantum strategy” to identify areas where advances in technology will have the greatest impact on daily lives in the future. The strategy was developed by the Quantum Technologies Strategic Advisory Board, a government funded agency, which oversees the £270m programme. 

One of the key goals will be the development of faster communications for mobile devices. The advisory board predicts that the market for quantum products and technology has the potential to become a £1bn industry, even if details of how mobile technology can use quantum theory — science at an atomic level — are thin on the ground.

So why did I suddenly think about 6G? Because I have had a few discussions where the research community feel that they should focus on technologies beyond 5G, something that would be a game changer and would change the way we do communications. To be honest, new ways of communications have been found (like LED-Fi / Li-Fi ) but they have not really been ground breaking.

Do you have any ideas or suggestions, add it as comments.

Wednesday 3 June 2015

'The Future Inter-connected Network' and Timing, Frequency & Phase requirements


I had the pleasure of doing a keynote at PhaseReady 2015 in London today. My presentation is embedded below along with some comments, followed by tweets some of which I think are important to think about. Finally, I have embedded a video by EE and Light Reading which was quoted and maybe its important in the context of this event.


My main focus during this presentation has been on how the networks have evolved from 3G days with the main focus (unconsciously) on speeds. While the networks are evolving, they are also getting more complex. The future ecosystem will consist of many Inter-connected (and in many cases inter-operable) networks that will work out the requirements in different situations and adapt to the necessary network(technology) accordingly.

An example of today's networks are like driving a manual car where we have to change gears depending on the traffic, speed required and fuel efficiency. Automatic cars are supposed to optimise this and achieve the best in all different cases. The future inter-connected networks should achieve the best based on the requirements in all different scenarios.

While it is easy to say this in theory, the practical networks will have many challenges to solve, including business and/or technical. The theme of the conference was timing, frequency and phase synchronisation. There are already challenges around them today, with the advanced LTE-A features. These challenges are only going to get bigger.

The following are the tweets from the day:



Finally, here is the link to video referred to in the last tweet. Its from last year but well worth listening.

Saturday 30 May 2015

'5G' talks from Johannesburg Summit 2015


The annual Johannesburg Summit took place May 10th-12th 2015. While it seems like there is a 5G related event every week, most of the events focus on different themes, use cases, applications and possibilities.

While there were some quite futuristic grand visions, there were a few technical presentations that would be a treat to the audience of this blog. I would especially recommend the presentations from Qualcomm and Samsung. Here is a video of all the presentations:


Some of the presentations from this summit, in PDF format are available here.

Saturday 23 May 2015

The path from 4.5G to 5G

In the WiFi Global Congress last week, I heard this interesting talk from an ex-colleague who now works with Huawei. While there were a few interesting things, the one I want to highlight is 4.5G. The readers of this blog will remember that I introduced 4.5G back in June last year and followed it with another post in October when everyone else started using that term and making it complicated.

According to this presentation, 3GPP is looking to create a new brand from Release-13 that will supersede LTE-Advanced (LTE-A). Some of you may remember that the vendor/operator community tried this in the past by introducing LTE-B, LTE-C, etc. for the upcoming releases but they were slapped down by 3GPP. Huawei is calling this Release-13 as 4.5G but it would be re-branded based on what 3GPP comes up with.


Another interesting point are the data rates achieved in the labs, probably more than others. 10.32Gbps in sub-6GHz in a 200MHz bandwidth and 115.20Gbps using a 9.6GHz bandwidth in above 6GHz spectrum. The complete presentation as follows:



Another Huawei presentation that merits inclusion is the one from the last Cambridge Wireless Small Cells SIG event back in February by Egon Schulz. The presentation is embedded below but I want to highlight the different waveforms that being being looked at for 5G. In fact if someone has a list of the waveforms, please feel free to add it in comments


The above tweet from a recent IEEE event in Bangalore is another example of showing the research challenges in 5G, including the waveforms. The ones that I can obviously see from above is: FBMC, UFMC, GFDM, NOMA, SCMA, OFDM-opt, f-OFDM.

The presentation as follows:




Sunday 19 April 2015

3GPP Release-13 work started in earnest


The 3GPP news from some months back listed the main RAN features that have been approved for Release-13 and the work has already started on them. The following are the main features (links contain .zip files):

  • LTE in unlicensed spectrum (aka Licensed-Assisted Access) - RP-150055
  • Carrier Aggregation enhancements - RP-142286
  • LTE enhancements for Machine-Type Communications (MTC) - RP-141865
  • Enhancements for D2D - RP-142311
  • Study Item Elevation Beamforming / Full-Dimension MIMO - RP-141831
  • Study Item Enhanced multi-user transmission techniques - RP-142315
  • Study Item Indoor positioning - RP-141102
  • Study Item Single-cell Point-to-Multipoint (SC-PTM) - RP-142205


Another 3GPP presentation from late last year showed the system features that were being planned for Rel-13 as shown above.

I have also posted a few items earlier relating to Release13, as follows:


Ericsson has this week published a whitepaper on release 13, with a vision for 'Networked Society':
The vision of the Networked Society, where everything that benefits from being connected will be connected, places new requirements on connectivity. LTE is a key component in meeting these demands, and LTE release 13 is the next step in the LTE evolution.
Their whitepaper embedded below:



It should be pointed out that 5G work does not start until Release-15 as can be seen from my tweet

xoxoxo Added Later (26/04/2015) xoxoxo
I came across this presentation from Keysight (Agilent) where Moray Rumney has provided information in much more detail.


Sunday 15 February 2015

5G and NFV


In my 5G: A 2020 vision presentation, I argued that some of the technologies that will be necessary for 5G is in fact independent of 5G. One such technology is NFV. Having said that, I also argue that the minimum prototype for 5G would require an NFV based implementation.


Tieto gave an interesting presentation in our last Small Cell SIG event explaining how the network will be implemented based on NFV. The presentation is embedded below:



There is also an interesting paper that expands on this further, available from Slideshare here.

Tuesday 3 February 2015

5G: A 2020 Vision


I had the pleasure of speaking at the CW (Cambridge Wireless) event ‘5G: A Practical Approach’. It was a very interesting event with great speakers. Over the next few weeks, I will hopefully add the presentations from some of the other speakers too.

In fact before the presentation (below), I had a few discussions over the twitter to validate if people agree with my assumptions. For those who use twitter, maybe you may want to have a look at some of these below:







Anyway, here is the presentation.

 

Wednesday 14 January 2015

IEEE Globecom 2014 Keynote Video: 5G Wireless Goes Beyond Smartphones


Embedded below is a video from the keynote session by Dr. Wen Tong of Huawei. I do not have the latest presentation but an earlier one (6 months old) is also embedded below for reference. It will give you a good idea on the 5G research direction





You may also be interested in this other presentation from Huawei in IEEE Globecom 2014, 5G: From Research to Standardization (what, how, when)

Friday 12 December 2014

5G Spectrum and challenges

I was looking at the proposed spectrum for 5G last week. Anyone who follows me on Twitter would have seen the tweets from last weekend already. I think there is more to discuss then just tweet them so here it is.




Metis has the most comprehensive list of all the bands identified from 6GHz, all the way to 86GHz. I am not exactly sure but the slide also identifies who/what is currently occupying these bands in different parts of the world.


The FCC in the USA has opened a Notice of Inquiry (NoI) for using the bands above 24GHz for mobile broadband. The frequency bands above have a potential as there is a big contiguous chunk of spectrum available in each band.



Finally, the slides from ETRI, South Korea show that they want to have 500MHz bandwidth in frequencies above 6GHz.

As I am sure we all know, the higher the frequency, the lower the cell size and penetration indoors. The advantage on the other hand is smaller cell sizes, leading to higher data rates. The antennas also become smaller at higher frequencies thereby making it easier to have higher order MIMO (and massive MIMO). The only way to reliably be able to do mobile broadband is to use beamforming. The tricky part with that is the beam has to track the mobile user which may be an issue at higher speeds.

The ITU working party 5D, recently released a draft report on 'The technical feasibility of IMT in the bands above 6 GHz'. The document is embedded below.




xoxoxo Added Later (13/12/2014) xoxoxo
Here are some links on the related topic:


xoxoxo Added Later (18/12/2014) xoxoxo
Moray Rumney from Keysight (Agilent) gave a presentation on this topic in the Cambridge Wireless Mobile Broadband SIG event yesterday, his presentation is embedded below.



Tuesday 11 November 2014

New Spectrum Usage Paradigms for 5G

Sometime back I wrote a post that talked about Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) techniques for Small Cells and WiFi to work together in a fair way. The Small Cells would be using the ISM bands and Wi-Fi AP's would also be contending for the same spectrum. For those who may not know, this is commonly referred to as LTE-U but the correct term that is being used in standards is LA-LTE, see here for details.

IEEE Comsoc has just published a whitepaper that details how the spectrum should be handled in 5G to make sure of efficient utilisation. The whitepaper covers the following:

Chapter 2 – Introduction, the traditional approach of repurposing spectrum and allocating it to Cellular Wireless systems is reaching its limits, at least below the 6GHz threshold. For this reason, novel approaches are required which are detailed in the sequel of this White Paper.

Chapter 3 - Spectrum Scarcity - an Alternate View provides a generic view on the spectrum scarcity issue and discusses key technologies which may help to alleviate the problem, including Dynamic Spectrum Management, Cognitive Radios, Cognitive Networks, Relaying, etc. 

Chapter 4 – mmWave Communications in 5G addresses a first key solution. While spectrum opportunities are running out at below 6 GHz, an abundance of spectrum is available in mmWave bands and the related technology is becoming mature. This chapter addresses in particular the heterogeneous approach in which legacy wireless systems are operated jointly with mmWave systems which allows to combine the advantages of both technologies. 

Chapter 5 – Dynamic Spectrum Access and Cognitive Radio: A Current Snapshot gives a detailed overview on state-of-the-art dynamic spectrum sharing technology and related standards activities. The approach is indeed complementary to the upper mmWave approach, the idea focuses on identifying unused spectrum in time, space and frequency. This technology is expected to substantially improve the usage efficiency of spectrum, in particular below the 6GHz range. 

Chapter 6 – Licensed Shared Access (LSA) enables coordinated sharing of spectrum for a given time period, a given geographic area and a given spectrum band under a license agreement. In contract to sporadic usage of spectrum on a secondary basis, the LSA approach will guarantee Quality-of-Service levels to both Incumbents and Spectrum Licensees. Also, a clear business model is available through a straightforward license transfer from relevant incumbents to licensees operating a Cellular Wireless network in the concerned frequency bands. 

Chapter 7 – Radio Environment Map details a technology which allows to gather the relevant (radio) context information which feed related decision making engines in the Network Infrastructure and/or Mobile Equipment. Indeed, tools for acquiring context information is critical for next generation Wireless Communication systems, since they are expected to be highly versatile and to constantly adapt. 

Chapter 8 – D2DWRAN: A 5G Network Proposal based on IEEE 802.22 and TVWS discusses the efficient exploitation of TV White Space spectrum bands building on the available IEEE 802.22 standard. TV White Spaces are indeed located in highly appealing spectrum bands below 1 GHz with propagation characteristics that are perfectly suited to the need of Wireless Communication systems. 

Chapter 9 – Conclusion presents some final thoughts. 

The paper is embedded as follows:



Sunday 19 October 2014

What is (pre-5G) 4.5G?

Before we look at what 4.5G is, lets look at what is not 4.5G. First and foremost, Carrier Aggregation is not 4.5G. Its the foundation for real 4G. I keep on showing this picture on Twitter


I am sure some people much be really bored by this picture of mine that I keep showing. LTE, rightly referred to as 3.9G or pre-4G by the South Korean and Japanese operators was the foundation of 'Real' 4G, a.k.a. LTE-Advanced. So who has been referring to LTE-A as 4.5G (and even 5G). Here you go:


So lets look at what 4.5G is.
Back in June, we published a whitepaper where we referred to 4.5G as LTE and WiFi working together. When we refer to LTE, it refers to LTE-A as well. The standards in Release-12 allow simultaneous use of LTE(-A) and WiFi with selected streams on WiFi and others on cellular.


Some people dont realise how much spectrum is available as part of 5GHz, hopefully the above picture will give an idea. This is exactly what has tempted the cellular community to come up with LTE-U (a.k.a LA-LTE, LAA)

In a recent event in London called 5G Huddle, Alcatel-Lucent presented their views on what 4.5G would mean. If you look at the slide above, it is quite a detailed view of what this intermediate step before 5G would be. Some tweets related to this discussion from 5G Huddle as follows:


Finally, in a recent GSMA event, Huawei used the term 4.5G to set out their vision and also propose a time-frame as follows:



While in Alcatel-Lucent slide, I could visualise 4.5G as our vision of LTE(-A) + WiFi + some more stuff, I am finding it difficult to visualise all the changes being proposed by Huawei. How are we going to see the peak rate of 10Gbps for example?

I have to mention that I have had companies that have told me that their vision of 5G is M2M and D2D so Huawei is is not very far from reality here.

We should keep in mind that this 4G, 4.5G and 5G are the terms we use to make the end users aware of what new cellular technology could do for them. Most of these people understand simple terms like speeds and latency. We may want to be careful what we tell them as we do not want to make things confusing, complicated and make false promises and not deliver on them.

xoxoxo Added on 2nd January 2015 oxoxox

Chinese vendor ZTE has said it plans to launch a ‘pre-5G’ testing base station in 2015, commercial use of which will be possible in 2016, following tests and adjustment. Here is what they think pre-5G means:


Tuesday 14 October 2014

'Real' Full Duplex (or No Division Duplex - NDD?)

We all know about the two type of transmission schemes which are FDD and TDD. Normally, this FDD and TDD schemes are known as full duplex schemes. Some people will argue that TDD is actually half-duplex but what TDD does is that it emulates a full duplex communication over a half duplex communication link. There is also a half-duplex FDD, which is a very interesting technology and defined for LTE, but not used. See here for details.


One of the technologies being proposed for 5G is referred to as Full Duplex. Here, the transmitter and the receiver both transmit and receive at the same frequency. Due to some very clever signal processing, the interference can be cancelled out. An interesting presentation from Kumu networks is embedded below:



The biggest challenge is self-interference cancellation because the transmitter and receiver are using the same spectrum and will cause interference to each other. There have been major advances in the self-interference cancellation techniques which could be seen in the Interdigital presentation embedded below:



Sunday 21 September 2014

NFV and 5G compatibility issues

There was an interesting discussion on Twitter that has been storified by Keith Dyer. Lets start by having a quick look at the C-RAN architecture that features in the discussion.


There are couple of excellent C-RAN presentations for anyone interested. This one by EE (with 9K+ views) and this from Orange (with 19K+ views).

Anyway, here is the story:


For anyone interested in exploring the discussion further, The Mobile Network has a more detailed comments here.

There are also an interesting article worth reading:

Thursday 10 July 2014

Taking 5G from vision to reality

This presentation by Moray Rumney of Agilent (Keysight) in Cambridge Wireless, Future of Wireless International conference takes a different angle at what the targets for different technologies have been and based on that what should be the targets for 5G. In fact he has an opinion on M2M and Public safety as well and tries to combine it with 5G. Unfortunately I wasnt at this presentation but from having heard Moray speak in past, I am sure it was a thought provoking presentation.



All presentations from the Future of Wireless International Conference (FWIC) are available here.

Friday 4 July 2014

Cell capacity and Opportunistic Use of Unlicensed and Shared Spectrum

One very interesting presentation from the LTE World Summit was about Improving the cell capacity by using unlicensed and shared spectrum opportunistically. Kamran Etemad is a senior advisor to FCC & UCMP and even though he was presenting this in his personal capacity, it reflected some interesting views that are quite prevalent in the USA.

If you don't know about Dynamic Spectrum Access Schemes, I wrote a post on the Small Cells blog here. The slide above is quite interesting as it shows the possibility of a 'Generalized' Carrier Aggregation in 3GPP Release-13. Personally, we believe that LTE + WiFi working together will be far more successful than LTE + LTE-U (unlicensed). As the blog readers would be aware, we have been pushing our vision of LTE + Wi-Fi working together; which we are calling as 4.5G. In case if you have not seen, our whitepaper is here.

The presentation is embedded below for reference: