Navigating the Airwaves: The Future of Spectrum in Wi-Fi and Cellular Networks

Peter Rysavy is the president of Rysavy Research LLC, the consulting firm that he has led since 1993, focusing on computer networking, wireless technology, and mobile computing. Recently he did a presentation for Oregon Chapter of IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc). The abstract of the talk states:

Wireless communication is fundamental to our digital society, with radio spectrum the key enabling resource. Understanding the critical role of spectrum provides deep insight into how wireless technologies function and how they will evolve. This enlightening talk delves into the ingenious advancements in Wi-Fi and cellular networks to harness spectrum, including increasing efficiency, deploying new bands, aggregating channels, and dynamically sharing spectrum. Despite huge progress, formidable challenges remain in meeting soaring demands for capacity, achieving global harmonization, and ensuring coexistence with existing services. 

Key takeaways:

• There is increasing demand for wireless spectrum from technologies like WiFi and 5G cellular networks, but the amount of usable spectrum is finite.
• Different spectrum bands have tradeoffs between coverage, capacity, and ability to support new technologies. The mid-band spectrum between 2 and 6 GHz is well-suited for 5G.
• Technologies are evolving to use spectrum more efficiently through techniques like carrier aggregation, advanced modulation, massive MIMO, and puncturing in WiFi 7.
• The US lacks a clear long-term national spectrum strategy and roadmap, putting it at a disadvantage compared to countries like China, which plan spectrum allocations years in advance.
• Spectrum sharing is complex with no one-size-fits-all solution, though approaches like beamforming, dynamic spectrum access databases, and sensing show promise if challenges are addressed.
• Harmonizing spectrum use globally through conferences helps drive economies of scale in devices and supports roaming, though the US diverges in some bands like 6 GHz assigned solely to WiFi.

The video of the talk is embedded below:

The slides are available here.

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• The 3G4G Blog: Prof. Ted Rappaport Keynote at EuCNC & 6G Summit 2023 on 'Looking Towards the 6G Era - What we may expect, and why'
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• Free 6G Training: Recent Advances on Terahertz (THz) communications
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• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Ericsson's Massive MIMO Handbook(s)
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• The 3G4G Blog - 6G: Above 100 GHz and Terahertz (THz) Frequencies
• Connectivity Technology Blog: The Evolution of Wi-Fi 7 (IEEE 802.11be EHT) to Wi-Fi 8 (IEEE 802.11bn UHR) 

Technological Complexification and The Return of Magic

I have been meaning to share this video/presentation by Patrick Scannell for quite some time now. Pat Scannell is a technology and telecom industry consultant who is a world leader on 5G and the co-evolution of technology and cognition, specializing in innovation and commercialization of emerging technologies across a wide range of industries.

At the IEEE International Symposium on Digital Privacy and Social Media 2022, Pat gave a talk titled 'The Return of Magic: Technological Complexification'. The outline of the talk says: 

Today’s tech is characterized by rapidly accelerating complexity, both in the densely layered technology itself but also in the increasingly hyper-specialized people who are needed to build it. But each person who builds it, and certainly most people who use tech, have a diminishing ability to understand how the whole of the techno-ecological niche we have created for ourselves (what I term ‘the return of magic’).

The case for this argument is outlined and then shows that the problems associated with this phenomenon are amplified by an inherent characteristic of a complex system - the lack of ability to know, understand, and predict system outcomes.

Against the broad scope of human history, the result of these forces could represent a reversal of a trend that started in the Enlightenment, but it also has very specific and actionable consequences on the day-to-day work of the tech industry and on Digital Privacy of our customers.

This talk aims to frame the problems, but in a constructive way that allows us to begin to build and adopt better technology, which could scaffold a better human experience.

The talk is embedded below, thanks to IEEE TV:

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AI/ML and Other ICT Industry Trends in the coming decades

At the Brooklyn 6G Summit (B6GS) 2023, top tier economist Dr. Jeff Shen from BlackRock, presented a talk from the industry perspective of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and investment. Jeff Shen, PhD, Managing Director, is Co-CIO and Co-Head of Systematic Active Equity (SAE) at BlackRock. He is a member of the BlackRock Global Operating Committee, BlackRock Systematic (BSYS) Management Committee and the BlackRock Asian Middle Eastern & Allies Network (AMP) Executive Committee.

How are firms reacting to AI? From 'ICT Industry Trends in the coming decades' by Jeff Shen, BlackRock at #B6GS - I am guessing the peak of mobile mention was the peak 5G hype in 2015/16. Hopefully the industry is now much wiser and won't repeat the 6G hype. pic.twitter.com/xjEiDtmSUZ

— Zahid Ghadialy (@zahidtg) November 5, 2023

In his talk he covered the history of how and where AI has been traditionally used and how the thinking around AI has changed over the last few decades. He then presented his view on if AI is just a fad or it's more than that. To illustrate the fact, he provided an example of how Generative AI market is expected to grow from $40 Billion in 2022 to $1.3 Trillion in 2032. 

There are many challenges that AI faces that one should be aware of; namely regulation, cyber threats and ethical concerns. In the US, AI touches the entire economy, from legal to healthcare. In their quarterly reporting, firms are now discussing AI and the larger tech companies are not afraid to grow inorganically in order to get more exposure to the trend. 

You can watch the whole of his talk embedded below, courtesy of IEEE Tv.

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Mobile Network Architecture: How did we get here & where should we go?

Lorenzo Casaccia, Vice President of Technical Standards, IP Qualcomm Europe, Inc. has been with Qualcomm since 2000. During that time he's had a variety of roles related to wireless communication, including research and system design, regulatory aspects, product management, and technical standardization. He currently leads a team of engineers across three continents driving Qualcomm’s activities in 3GPP, the standards body designing technologies for 4G and 5G.

Couple of his well known articles on Qualcomm OnQ Blog on 'Counting 3GPP contributions' and 'ETSI SEP database manipulations' are available here and here respectively.

Fascinating & rather heretical presentation by @Qualcomm on the 6G Core workshop - suggesting that maybe a new architecture is needed that massively reduces role/complexity of the core

Is most slicing-skeptic I’ve seen from a big vendor

(Sorry don’t have screenshots)

— Dean Bubley (@disruptivedean) September 12, 2023

At the recent NIST/IEEE Future Networks 6G Core Networks Workshop he was able to bring in his experience to deliver a fantastic talk looking at how the mobile network architecture has diverged from the Data Networks (Internet) architecture and how this has limited innovation in the mobile networks.

He concludes by providing a solution on how to fix this network architecture in 6G by limiting any new services going in the control plane as well as ensuring over the time all services move to the user plane. The control plane will then stop being 'G' specific which will benefit the network innovation in the long term. 

There is no provision to embed the video so please look at the top of the page here. Lorenzo's talk starts at 03:03:50. The Q&A session for the panel starts at 03:53:20 for anyone interested.

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Presentations from 2nd IEEE Open RAN Summit

The second IEEE SA (Standards Association) Open RAN summit, hosted by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, took place on 9-10 Aug 2023. It covered the topics related to the standardization of Open RAN including O-RAN Alliance, 3GPP, IEEE, various deployment scenarios, testing and integration, Open RAN security, RAN slicing, and RAN optimization among others. 

The videos of the presentations can be viewed on the summit page here or though the video playlist here.

The talk from Dr. Chih-Lin I, O-RAN Alliance TSC Co-Chair and CMCC Chief Scientist, Wireless Technologies on 'AI/ML impact, from 5.5G to 6G' is embedded below:

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• The 3G4G Blog: Open RAN Explanation, Videos, White papers and Other Resources 

Demystifying and Defining the Metaverse

There is no shortage of Metaverse papers and articles as it is the latest trend in the long list of technologies promising to change the world. Couple of months back I wrote a post about it in the 6G blog here.

TOMORROW: Hear from leading experts in the field about key questions such as how this technology is evolving, how can it be leveraged to augment business and personal environments, and what socio-technical and ethical questions have to be addressed. https://t.co/NggnJPu4eU pic.twitter.com/kfmYiCdomP

— IEEE Standards Assoc (@IEEESA) July 5, 2022

IEEE hosted a Metaverse Congress with the Kickoff Session 'Demystifying and Defining the Metaverse' this month as can be seen in the Tweet above. The video embedded below covers the following talks:

• 0:01:24 - Opening Remarks by Eva Kaili (Vice President, European Parliament)
• 0:09:51 - Keynote - Metaverse Landscape and Outlook by Yu Yuan (President-Elect, IEEE Standards Association)
• 0:29:30 - Keynote - Through the Store Window by Thomas Furness (“Grandfather of Virtual Reality”)
• 0:52:30 - Keynote - XR: The origin of the Metaverse as Water-Human-Computer Interaction (WaterHCI) by Steve Mann (“Father of Wearable Computing”)
• 1:22:17 - Keynote - A Vision of the Metaverse: AI Infused, Physically Accurate Virtual Worlds by Rev Lebaredian (VP of Omniverse & Simulation Technology, NVIDIA)

Some fantastic definitions, explanations, use cases and vision on Metaverse. The final speaker nicely summarised Metaverse as shown in this slide below.

Worth highlighting point 6 that the Metaverse is device independent. I argued about something similar when we try and link everything to 6G (like we linked everything to 5G before). We are just in the beginning phase, a lot of updates and clarifications will come in the next few years before Metaverse starts taking a final shape.

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Extending 5G TDD Coverage With XDD (Cross Division Duplex)

A new 3GPP Technical report, TR 38.858 (draft not available yet) will look at Study on evolution of NR duplex operation (FS_NR_duplex_evo) in Rel-18. RP-213591 provides a justification on why this new duplex evolution needs to be studied:

TDD is widely used in commercial NR deployments. In TDD, the time domain resource is split between downlink and uplink. Allocation of a limited time duration for the uplink in TDD would result in reduced coverage, increased latency and reduced capacity. As a possible enhancement on this limitation of the conventional TDD operation, it would be worth studying the feasibility of allowing the simultaneous existence of downlink and uplink, a.k.a. full duplex, or more specifically, subband non-overlapping full duplex at the gNB side within a conventional TDD band.

The NR TDD specifications allow the dynamic/flexible allocation of downlink and uplink in time and CLI handling and RIM for NR were introduced in Rel-16. Nevertheless, further study may be required for CLI handling between the gNBs of the same or different operators to enable the dynamic/flexible TDD in commercial networks. The inter-gNB CLI may be due to either adjacent-channel CLI or co-channel-CLI, or both, depending on the deployment scenario. One of the problems not addressed in the previous releases is gNB-to-gNB CLI.

This study aims to identify the feasibility and solutions of duplex evolution in the areas outlined above to provide enhanced UL coverage, reduced latency, improved system capacity, and improved configuration flexibility for NR TDD operations in unpaired spectrum. In addition, the regulatory aspects need to be examined for deploying identified duplex enhancements in TDD unpaired spectrum considering potential constraints.

Samsung has a technical white paper on this topic which they refer to as XDD (Cross Division Duplex), available here. The abstract says:

XDD (Cross Division Duplex) is one of the key technologies that Samsung is proposing as part of Rel-18 NR (5G-Advanced) to address the coverage issue observed during the initial phase of 5G deployment. XDD provides improved coverage, capacity, and latency compared to conventional TDD. Instead of relying solely on orthogonal time resources for DL-UL separation as in TDD, XDD allows simultaneous DL-UL operation by using non-overlapping frequency resources within a carrier bandwidth.

This white paper provides a high level description of XDD concept, benefits, and implementation challenges. First, an overview of XDD including a comparison with conventional TDD and FDD is provided. Next, the implementation challenges of XDD especially at the base station to handle self-interference mitigation is provided. Furthermore, several features that we consider critical in realizing XDD in actual deployment scenarios are provided along with some performance results. Finally, Samsung’s view on XDD for the next phase of 5G (5G-Advanced) is provided.

An open access IEEE Access paper, 'Extending 5G TDD Coverage With XDD', written by Samsung researchers provides a much more detailed insight into this topic. The abstract says:

In this paper, an advanced duplex scheme called cross-division duplex (XDD) is proposed to enhance uplink (UL) coverage in time division duplex (TDD) carriers by utilizing self-interference cancellation (SIC) capability at a base station. With XDD, it is possible to combine TDD’s ability to efficiently handle asymmetric UL and downlink (DL) traffic with frequency division duplex’s coverage advantage. To do so, XDD simultaneously operates UL and DL on the same TDD carrier but on different frequency resources. Such operation leads to severe interference on the received UL signal at the base station which requires two levels of SIC implementation; antenna and digital SIC. More than 50 dB of interference is removed through the antenna SIC using electromagnetic barriers between the transmitting and receiving antennas. The remaining interference is removed by the digital SIC based on estimating the non-linear channel of the circuit at the receiver baseband. It is verified by simulation and analysis that with the proposed XDD, the UL coverage can be improved by up to 2.37 times that of TDD. To check the feasibility of XDD, a Proof-of-Concept was developed where it was observed that the benefits of XDD can indeed be realized using the proposed SIC techniques

In the segment of the video embedded below, Dr. Hyoung Ju Ji, Principal Engineer, Samsung Electronics, Korea explains how XDD is a Realistic Option for Full Duplex Realization.

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5G & AI Powered Smart Hospitals

5G Telehealth has been one of the main driving use cases for upgrading the infrastructure. While some use cases definitely make sense, some others like remote surgery will most likely never happen, at least the way it's depicted today.

At the GSMA Mobile 360 APAC - 5G Industry Community Summit, Michael Fung, Chief Information Officer from CHUK Medical Centre presented a nice talk detailing how they see 5G & AI powered hospitals of the future. The video of his talk is embedded at the bottom of this post.

There have also been some other discussions on 5G & healthcare recently. Here are the links if you want to explore this topic further:

• Video: UK5G Presents Health & Social Care Panel Session
• Video: Telecoms Europe 5G 2021 - What can 5G do for healthcare?
• Video: Ericsson - 5G Connected Ambulance
• Video: 5G Healthcare Application for Smart Hospital - Tseung Kwan O Hospital
• Article: Vodafone Germany launches real-time network in the first 5G hospital 

Service Level Agreements for 5G and Beyond: Overview, Challenges and Enablers of 5G-Healthcare Systems - https://t.co/axJ05r2VqX via U.S. FDA (@US_FDA)#Free5Gtraining #5G #5GTechnology #5GUseCases #5GHealthcare #Healthcare #SLA #Cybersecurity #5Gsecurity pic.twitter.com/O9c0GEemt4

— Free 5G Training (@5Gtraining) December 6, 2021

The US FDA recently published a one pager looking at how Service level agreements (SLAs) can enable 5G-enabled medical device use cases by documenting how a medical device communication requirement is met by the unique characteristics of 5G networks and the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders involved in offering safe and effective 5G-enabled healthcare to patients.

IEEE Access has a detailed paper on this topic by the same authors. Quoting from the abstract:

Service level agreements (SLAs) can enable 5G-enabled medical device use cases by documenting how a medical device communication requirements are met by the unique characteristics of 5G networks and the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders involved in offering safe and effective 5G-enabled healthcare to patients. However, there are gaps in this space that should be addressed to facilitate the efficient implementation of 5G technology in healthcare. Current literature is scarce regarding SLAs for 5G and is absent regarding SLAs for 5G-enabled medical devices. This paper aims to bridge these gaps by identifying key challenges, providing insight, and describing open research questions related to SLAs in 5G and specifically 5G-healthcare systems. This is helpful to network service providers, users, and regulatory authorities in developing, managing, monitoring, and evaluating SLAs in 5G-enabled medical systems.

Here is the video from GSMA 5G Industry Community Summit Part 2:

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5G-Advanced Flagship Features

I am starting to get a feeling that people may be becoming overwhelmed with all the new 5G features and standards update. That is why this presentation by Mikael Höök, Director Radio Research at Ericsson, at Brooklyn 6G Summit (B6GS) caught my attention. 

The talk discusses the network infrastructure progress made in the previous two years to better illustrate the advanced 5G timeline to discovering 6G requirements. At the end of the talk, there was a quick summary of the four flagship features that are shown in the picture above. The talk is embedded below, courtesy of IEEE TV

In addition to this talk, October 2021 issue of Ericsson Technology Review covers the topic "5G evolution toward 5G advanced: An overview of 3GPP releases 17 and 18". You can get the PDF here.

I have covered the basics of these flagship features in the following posts:

• AI/ML (link)
• RedCap (link)
• XR (link)
• Network Energy Efficiency (link)

Please feel free to add your thoughts as comments below.

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TSDSI's Low Mobility Large Cell (LMLC) Requirements in 5G

Back in November 2020, ITU completed the evaluation for global affirmation of IMT-2020 technologies. Three new technologies were successfully evaluated by ITU and were found to conform with the International Mobile Telecommunications 2020 (IMT-2020) vision and stringent performance requirements. The technologies are: 3GPP 5G-SRIT and 3GPP 5G-RIT submitted by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), and 5Gi submitted by Telecommunications Standards Development Society India (TSDSI). 

I have explained in earlier videos that 5G-SRIT  and 5G-RIT corresponds to Non-Standalone and Standalone respectively. 5Gi on the other hand is an updated version of 5G-RIT designed mainly to improve rural coverage. 

ITU completes evaluation for global affirmation of IMT-2020 technologies - https://t.co/dmALByqXh1 - So the 2 3GPP (@3GPPLive) 5G technologies 5G-SRIT and 3GPP 5G-RIT, and 5Gi submitted by TSDSI (@TSDSI_India) conform with IMT-2020 vision and stringent performance requirement. https://t.co/lFhfugcLux

— Zahid Ghadialy (@zahidtg) November 27, 2020

TSDSI announced this as follows:

TSDSI’s 5G Radio Interface Technology named as “5Gi” has cleared the rigorous processes of  International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and has been approved by the SG5 of ITU as a part of Draft Recommendation M.[IMT-2020.SPECS] in its meeting held on 23rd November 2020.

5Gi, the first  ever Mobile Radio Interface Technology contribution from India to become part of ITU-R’s  IMT recommendation, went through a rigorous evaluation process of the ITU-R working groups over the past 3 years before getting the approval.

This standard is a major breakthrough for bridging the rural-urban digital divide in 5G deployment due to enhanced coverage. It enables connecting majority of India’s villages through towers located at gram panchayats in a cost effective manner. It has found support from several countries as it addresses their regional needs from a 5G standpoint.

The standard will now be circulated by ITU to member states for adoption and approval. Specifications are expected to be published by ITU in early February 2021.

TSDSI thanks its members, the Department of Telecommunications, Govt. of India and its partners for their support over the last four years in helping get this standard reach the final stage in ITU.

In a keynote address presented to the 2020 IEEE 5G World Forum plenary session, Radha Krishna Ganti from TSDSI discusses rural connectivity challenges in India, Low Mobility Large Cell requirements, benefits of implementing LMLC for rural coverage, and internet ecosystem updates. His talk is embedded as follows:

TSDSI explains their 5Gi technology as follows:

TSDSI standard fulfils the requirements of affordable connectivity in rural, remote and sparsely populated areas. Enhanced cell coverage enabled by this standard, will be of great value in countries and regions that rely heavily on mobile technologies for connectivity but cannot afford dense deployment of base stations due to lack of deep fibre penetration,  poor economics and challenges of geographical terrain. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN body that is setting requirements for IMT 2020 (aka 5G), had earlier adopted the Low-Mobility-Large-Cell (LMLC) use case proposed by TSDSI as a mandatory 5G requirement in 2017. This test case addresses the problem of rural coverage by mandating large cell sizes in a rural terrain and scattered areas in developing as well as developed countries. Several countries supported this as they saw a similar need in their jurisdictions as well. TSDSI successfully introduced an indigenously developed 5G candidate Radio Interface Technology, compatible with 3GPP Technology, at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in 2019 for IMT 2020 ratification. The RIT incorporates India-specific technology enhancements that can enable larger coverage for meeting the LMLC requirements. It exploits a new transmit waveform that increases cell range developed by research institutions in India (IIT Hyderabad, CEWiT and IIT Madras) and supported by several Indian companies. It enables low-cost rural coverage and has additional features which enable higher spectrum efficiency and improved latency.

While technically this sounds interesting and as discussed in the talk, would make sense due to a large market like India, there are other solutions that are already possible that probably may make this redundant.

As someone who worked with the rural communities to bring coverage in hard to reach areas, small cells and In-band backhaul was one such solution to improve coverage in not-spot areas. Examples of that here and here. Relays are other option that don't cost much but can bring coverage quickly, at a much lower price.

Typically, in practice, the cells easily reach 10km radius. In theory this distance can be as much as 100km. Last year, Australian operator Telstra and vendor Ericsson announced that they have successfully managed to increase the range of an LTE cell from 100 km to 200 km. So, we can already have large cells with existing 4G/5G cells. 

Facebook connectivity is working on SuperCell concept, a Wide-Area Coverage Solution for Increasing Mobile Connectivity in Rural Communities. Details here. NGMN published a paper on Extreme Long Range Communications for Deep Rural Coverage. Details here.

Finally, we also have 5G Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) that can be used for backhauling and solving backhaul issues. They will end up playing a role in rural areas as well as dense urban areas eventually.

Let me know what you think.

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ITU Standardization Bureau on Machine Learning for 5G

Last year I blogged about Global ITU AI/ML 5G Challenge on the theme “How to apply ITU's ML architecture in 5G networks".  The grand challenge finale happened in December. All the recording and presentations are available here.

Back in October, Bilel Jamoussi from ITU presented a keynote to the 2020 IEEE 5G World Forum plenary session where he addressed the challenges of applying machine learning in networks, ITU’s ML toolkit, and ITU’s AI/ML in 5G Competition. IEEE Tv shared the presentation only in April so the competition part is a bit outdated. It does nevertheless an interesting 20 minute talk.

ITU Recommendation Y.3174, Framework for data handling to enable machine learning in future networks including IMT-2020 is available here.

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5G Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) Enhancements in Rel-17

It's been a while since I last wrote about IAB on this blog here. At that time 3GPP Release-16 was being discussed. Since then things have moved on. While Release-16 is being prepared for final release soon, Release-17 study and work items have just been agreed upon.

IAB is included as part of Rel-16 but there isn't a comprehensive document or presentation easily available to details all that it will contain. Similarly the enhancements for Release-17 are available only superficially. Qualcomm is well known for making some really excellent presentations available on 5G. One of their presentations from January (here) has some details on IAB (pg. 32 - 35). There was also an excellent presentation by Navid Abedini, Qualcomm from IEEE Sarnoff Symposium, 2019 which is embedded at the end.

In a 3GPP RAN#84 discussion document RP-191181, Samsung has provided a comprehensive summary of what is being done as part of Rel-16 and what did not make in that:

• Rel-16 IAB aims at basic operations
• Architecture and protocol design
• IAB integration procedure 
• Routing, BAP and BH configuration
• CP and UP data transmission  via IAB
• Topology support: 
• Spanning Tree (ST) and Directed acyclic graph (DAG) 
• Intra-Donor adaptation is prioritized
• The following cannot  be supported in Rel-16
• Mobile IAB
• Topology support: Mesh
• Some functionalities in Rel-16 may not be completed due to time constrains e.g. 
• Topology adaptation between IAB donors
• Mechanisms for efficient control signaling transmission

Ericsson also provides a good summary in RP-190971 regarding Release 16 IAB and Rel-17 enhancements:

• IAB Rel-16 provide basic support for multi-hop and multi-path relaying. 
• The solution supports 
• QoS prioritization of traffic on the backhaul link
• Flexible resource usage between access and backhaul
• Topology adaptivity in case link failure
• In Rel-17 it would be possible to further evolve the IAB solution targeting increased efficiency and support for new use cases

Meanwhile in the recently concluded RAN#86, AT&T provided a good detailed summary on what enhancements are required for IAB as part of Rel-17 in RP-192709

• Duplexing enhancements
• Multiplexing beyond TDM (FDM/SDM/multi-panel Tx/Rx) including multi-parent scenarios, case 6/7 timing alignment, power control/CLI optimizations
• Topology enhancements
• Mobile IAB: CP/UP split + Group mobility 
• Inter-CU topology adaptation
• Mesh-connectivity between IAB nodes for local control/user plane routing
• User plane enhancements
• Multi-hop scheduling enhancement – exchange of benefit metric between IAB nodes to enable radio-aware multi-hop scheduling to improve throughput performance
• Network Coding
• Study benefits compared to duplication over redundant backhaul routes

We will have to wait and see what makes it into the enhancements and what don't. Meanwhile here is a video from Navid Abedini, Qualcomm from IEEE Sarnoff Symposium, 2019




Related Posts:

• Connectivity Technology Blog: Integrated Access and Backhauling (IAB) - Today and Tomorrow
• 5G Evolution with Matthew Baker, Nokia
• Summary of #CWTEC 2019 Conference: 5G, Satellites & Magic MIMO
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• R&S Webinar on LTE-A Pro and evolution to 5G
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LTE / 5G Broadcast Evolution

It's been a while since I last wrote about eMBMS. A report by GSA last month identified:
- 41 operators known to have been investing in eMBMS
- 5 operators have now deployed eMBMS or launched some sort of commercial service using eMBMS
- GSA identified 69 chipsets supporting eMBMS, and at least 59 devices that support eMBMS

#eMBMS
- 41 operators known to have been investing in eMBMS
- 5 operators have now deployed eMBMS or launched some sort of commercial service using eMBMS
- GSA identified 69 chipsets supporting eMBMS, and at least 59 devices that support eMBMShttps://t.co/EjjOH1tQxy pic.twitter.com/Gcc35BFC8H

— GSA (@gsacom) August 6, 2019

BBC R&D are testing the use of 4G/5G broadcast technology to deliver live radio services to members of the public as part of 5G RuralFirst - one of 6 projects funded under the UK Government’s 5G Phase 1 testbeds and trials programme (link).

A press release by Samsung Electronics back in May announced that it has signed an expansion contract with KT Corporation (KT) to provide public safety (PS-LTE) network solutions based on 3GPP standard Release 13 for 10 major metropolitan regions in South Korea including Seoul by 2020. One of the features of PS-LTE that the PR listed was LTE Broadcast (eMBMS): A feature which allows real time feeds to hundreds of devices simultaneously. It enables thousands of devices to be connected at once to transfer video, images and voice simultaneously using multicast technology

Dr. Belkacem Mouhouche – Samsung Electronics Chief Standards Engineer  and Technical Manager of 5G projects: 5G-Xcast and 5G-Tours Presented an excellent overview on this topic at IEEE 5G Summit Istanbul, June 2019. His presentation is embedded below.

Recent advances in Broadcasting standards and research from 3G4G

5G-Xcast is a 5GPPP Phase II project focused on Broadcast and Multicast Communication Enablers For the Fifth Generation of Wireless Systems.

They have a YouTube channel here and this video below is an introduction to project and the problems it looks to address.




Further Reading:

• GSA Report: LTE Broadcast (eMBMS) Market Update – July 2019
• GSA Snapshot: LTE Broadcast – eMBMS – Snapshot July 2019

Related posts:

• The 3G4G Blog: Multicast Operation on Demand (MooD) and Service Continuity for eMBMS
• Operator Watch Blog: Telstra's LTE-B Push
• Operator Watch Blog: Reliance Jio getting ready for LTE-Broadcast (eMBMS) rollout
• The 3G4G Blog: Mission Critical Services update from 3GPP - June 2017

6G: Above 100 GHz and Terahertz (THz) Frequencies

A new research paper  "Wireless Communications and Applications Above 100 GHz: Opportunities and Challenges for 6G and Beyond" by T. S. Rappaport et al. is available on IEEE website here.

With 5G, we are still solving the challenges of millimeter waves (mmWaves) so it is surprising for most people to hear that there is a research going on beyond 100 GHz and in THz frequencies. Quoting from the abstract of the paper:

The paper describes many of the technical challenges and opportunities for wireless communication and sensing applications above 100 GHz, and presents a number of promising discoveries, novel approaches, and recent results that will aid in the development and implementation of the sixth generation (6G) of wireless networks, and beyond. It also shows recent regulatory and standard body rulings that are anticipating wireless products and services above 100 GHz and illustrates the viability of wireless cognition, hyper-accurate position location, sensing, and imaging. The paper also presents approaches and results that show how long distance mobile communications will be supported to above 800 GHz since the antenna gains are able to overcome air-induced attenuation, and present methods that reduce the computational complexity and simplify the signal processing used in adaptive antenna arrays, by exploiting the Special Theory of Relativity to create a cone of silence in over-sampled antenna arrays that improve performance for digital phased array antennas. Also, new results that give insights into power efcient beam steering algorithms, and new propagation and partition loss models above 100 GHz are given, and promising imaging, array processing, and position location results are presented. The implementation of spatial consistency at THz frequencies, an important component of channel modeling that considers minute changes and correlations over space, is also discussed. This paper offers the first in-depth look at the vast applications of THz wireless products and applications and provides approaches for how to reduce power and increase performance across several problem domains, giving early evidence that THz techniques are compelling and available for future wireless communications.


At Brooklyn 5G Summit 2019, NYU Wireless founder and director, Dr. Ted Rappaport, presented a keynote on his vision beyond 5G, looking at both electronics and photonics, considering applications over 100GHz, channel models, and said that he expects brain-comparative data rate transmission wirelessly over the air in future networks. The keynote is embedded as video above.

Another keynote by Gerhard Fettweis from TU Dresden, talks about terahertz starting off with a look back at the history of mobile network generations up to 5G and looking ahead to 6G. Anticipating the tactile internet revolution to come, he considers the technicalities such as spectrum, channels, efficiency and adaptability needed to achieve the expected level of computing. That keynote can be viewed here.

Related Posts and articles:

• Terahertz and Beyond 100 GHz progress
• New Tutorial on 5G Spectrum
• Keynote: Gerhard Fettweis - Terahertz Communication - B5GS 2019
• After 5G, where do we go? - Steve Taranovich, Planet Analog

Wi-Fi 6 (a.k.a. 802.11ax) and other Wi-Fi enhancements

Last year I wrote about how Wi-Fi is getting new names. 802.11ax for example, the latest and greatest of the Wi-Fi standards is known as Wi-Fi 6. There were many announcements at MWC 2019 about WiFi 6, some of which I have captured here.

I came across a nice simple explanatory video explaining Wi-Fi 6 for non-technical people. Its embedded below.


The video is actually sponsored by Cisco and you can read more about Wi-Fi 6 and comparison of Wi-Fi 6 and 5G on their pages.

At MWC19, Cisco was showing Passpoint autoconnectivity on Samsung Galaxy S9, S9+ or Note 9 device. According to their blog:

Together, we’re working to provide a better bridge between mobile and Wi-Fi networks. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona we’ll show the first step in that journey. Anyone using a Samsung Galaxy S9, S9+ or Note 9 device (and those lucky enough to have an early Galaxy S10) over the Cisco-powered guest wireless network will be able to seamlessly and securely connect – without any manual authentication. No portal, no typing in passwords, no picking SSIDs, no credit cards — just secure automatic connectivity.  How?  By using credentials already on your phone, like your operator SIM card.  Even if your operator doesn’t currently support Passpoint autoconnectivity, your Samsung smartphone will!  As a Samsung user, you already have an account for backups and device specific applications. This credential can also be used for a secure and seamless onboarding experience, supporting connectivity to enterprise, public and SP access networks.

It's worth mentioning here that the WPA2 authentication algorithm is being upgraded to WPA3 and we will see broad adoption this year, in conjunction with 802.11ax. See the tweet for details

WPA2 is being upgraded to WPA3 and we will see broad adoption this year, in conjunction with 802.11ax #Privacy #Security - slides from @RSAConference #RSCA2019 - https://t.co/gXYu9rlomX - via @avrilsalterUSA pic.twitter.com/BnpwAD4Fkb

— 3G4G (@3g4gUK) March 31, 2019

Broadcom announced their new BCM43752, Dual-Band 802.11ax Wi-Fi/Bluetooth 5 Combo Chip. Motley Fool explains why this is interesting news:

The chip specialist is rounding out its Wi-Fi 6 portfolio to address lower price points.

When Samsung announced its Galaxy S10-series of premium smartphones, wireless chipmaker Broadcom announced, in tandem, that its latest BCM4375 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth connectivity combination chip is powering those new flagship smartphones. That chip was the company's first to support the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard, which promises significant performance improvements over previous-generation Wi-Fi technology.

The BCM4375 is a high-end part aimed at premium smartphones, meaning that it's designed for maximum performance, but its cost structure (as well as final selling price) is designed for pricier devices that can handle relatively pricey chips.

Broadcom explains that the BCM43752 "significantly reduces smartphone bill of materials by integrating [radio frequency] components such as power amplifiers (PAs) and low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) into the device."

The idea here is simple: Since these components are integrated in the chip that smartphone makers are buying from Broadcom, those smartphone makers won't need to buy those components separately.

In the press release, Broadcom quoted Phil Solis, research director at the market research company IDC, as saying that this chip "reduced costs by going down to single core, 2X2 MIMO for Wi-Fi, integrating the PAs and LNAs, and offering flexible packaging options while keeping the same functionality as their flagship combo chip." 

Broadcom explains that this chip is targeted at "the broader smartphone market where high performance and total solution cost are equally important design decisions."

In addition to these, Intel showed a demo of Wi-Fi 6 at 6GHz. Most people are aware that Wi-Fi uses 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz & 60 GHz band. According to Wi-Fi Now:

So why is that important? Simply because 6 GHz Wi-Fi is likely the biggest opportunity in Wi-Fi in a generation – and because Intel’s demo shows that Wi-Fi chipset vendors are ready to pounce on it. The demonstration was a part of Intel’s elaborate Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) demonstration set at MWC.

“When this enhancement [meaning 6 GHz spectrum] to Wi-Fi 6 rolls out in the next couple of years, it has the potential to more than double the Wi-Fi spectrum with up to 4x more 160 MHz channel deployment options,” said Doron Tal, Intel’s General Manager Wireless Infrastructure Group, in his blog here. Doron Tal emphasises that the prospect of including 6 GHz bands in Wi-Fi for the time being realistically only applies to the US market.

Intel also says that a growing number of currently available PCs already support 160 MHz channels, making them capable of operating at gigabit Wi-Fi speeds. This means that consumers will get ‘a pleasant surprise’ in terms of speed if they invest in a Wi-Fi 6 home router already now, Intel says.

It may however take a while before US regulator FCC finally rules on allowing Wi-Fi to operate in the 6 GHz bands. Right now the FCC is reviewing dozens of response submissions following the issuing of the NPRM for unlicensed 6 GHz operation – and they will likely have their hands full for months while answering a litany of questions as to prospective new 6 GHz spectrum rules.

Also an important part of the 6 GHz story is the fact that the IEEE only weeks ago decided that – as far as the 802.11 standards are concerned – only Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) will be specified to operate in the 6 GHz band. That means 6 GHz will be pristine legacy-free territory for Wi-Fi 6 devices.

That brings us to the Wi-Fi evolution that will be coming after 802.11ax. IEEE 802.11 Extremely High Throughput (EHT) Study Group was formed late last year that will be working on defining the new 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7?) standards. See tweet below:

IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (EHT) is the next generation of Wi-Fi Technology, beyond 802.11ax. One of the interesting enhancements will be that new tech will be able to work from 1GHz to 7.125 GHz. More in this paper: https://t.co/ESs95805d4 pic.twitter.com/QtTMJRHTZG

— 3G4G (@3g4gUK) April 20, 2019

The interesting thing to note here is that the Wi-Fi spectrum will become flexible to operate from 1 GHz to 7.125 GHz. Of course the rules will be different in different parts of the world. It will also have to avoid interference with other existing technologies like cellular, etc.

According to Fierce Wireless, Huawei has completed a global deployment of its enterprise-class Wi-Fi 6 products under the new AirEngine brand. Speaking at the company’s Global Analyst Summit, Huawei said its Wi-Fi 6 products have been deployed on a large scale in five major regions worldwide.

Back at MWC, Huawei was showing off their Wi-Fi 6 enabled CPEs. See tweet below:

@Huawei touting it's broad portfolio of connected devices.

Meet the Huawei's 5G CPE router for Smart Home which drives Wi-Fi 6 with 5G backhaul.
Also include Huawei's HiLink smart home platform for controlling third party smart home devices#MWC19 #ConnectingTheFuture pic.twitter.com/lO7DcVHYbO

— Neil Shah (@neiltwitz) February 24, 2019

Huawei has many different enterprise networking products that are already supporting Wi-Fi 6 today. You can see the details along with whitepapers and application notes here. In addition, the Top 10 Wi-Fi 6 misconceptions are worth a read, available here.

Related Posts: 

• Operator Watch Blog: South Korea's Ministry promotes Wi-Fi 6, says WiFi is like 5G
• Connectivity Technology Blog: IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (EHT), a.k.a. Wi-Fi 7 

Slides and Videos from the 1st 6G Wireless Summit - March 2019

The first 6G wireless summit was held in Levi ski resort, in beautiful Lapland. According to the report by University of Oulu, 287 participants from 28 different countries spanning all inhabited continents took part. According to the report:

At the Summit, the participants’ were asked to project themselves into the world in 2030, potentially very different from today. As professor Matti Latva-aho, the director of 6G Flagship at the University of Oulu, and the driving force behind the vision of global 6G, puts it: ”The vision for 2030 is that our society is data-driven, enabled by near-instant, unlimited connectivity. We will be facing a growing and ageing population, demands for increased productivity and the need to connect the billions who are not currently connected. We challenged all of the conference attendants, pressing them to consider this future world beyond 5G and the most essential aspects of 6G research -- a decade in advance.”

Peter Vetter, Head of the Access Research at Nokia Bell Labs and a Bell Labs Fellow, took on Latva-aho’s vision for the future. Vetter says that in the future, the network needs to be thought of as a platform that creates network instances for specific environments. Specialized uses can be easily imagined including hospitals, elderly care, traffic and power plants. At the heart of it all is enhancing the human condition, Vetter says. “6G is still ten years and longer out, and I think that this is a consensus among the 6G Summit participants. However, it is time to start the research right now, because it takes 10-20 years before a new innovation sees a commercial launch,” Vetter says.

For wireless revolution to happen, there needs to be a revolutionary communication technology, a revolutionary application of that technology and a whole ecosystem for continued innovation, says Dr. Wen Tong, Head of Wireless Research and Head of Communications Technologies Laboratories at Huawei. “Wireless as a field has plenty of room for innovation. We need a young generation of researchers and an environment that will sustain continued innovation. This is very important, as without the young generation of research leaders the sustainability of the ecosystem will become problematic,” Dr. Tong explains.

Takehiro Nakamura, SVP and General Manager of the 5G Laboratories in NTT DoCoMo brought up the requirements for many future use cases, such as low latency, reliability, massive connectivity etc. and made a point that most of these will be met with 5G. “Then, there will be new combinations of extreme requirements for specific use cases. We need to provide extreme high reliability for a guaranteed quality of service for industry, peak data rates of over 100 Gbps, gigabyte-rate coverage everywhere, and to have everything run at extreme low energy consumption and cost,” Nakamura says. As Nakamura sees it, the future will have high-quality, real-time VR and AR. Massive IoT for anything and anywhere, like satellites in space. Broadband for flying mobility, which will need high coverage and high reliability.

Qi Bi, President of China Telecom Technology Innovation Center and CTO of China Telecom Research Institute thinks that 6G could be a turning point and a real revolution from 5G also in other terms besides technological. Even if we don’t yet know what 6G will be, it is going to be based on past generations and some traits will be there, Dr. Bi says. As far as gauging 6G research today, Dr. Bi says that the Summit was a great event for percolating a lot of ideas.

Some of the hot topics in 5G and in 6G are machine learning and artificial intelligence. Head of Ericsson Research Magnus Frodigh is a big believer in the coming 5G evolution. As networks are Ericsson’s strong point, Frodigh says it will be very interesting to see what distributed AI is going to bring to the game.

You can read the complete report here.

All the slides that were shared, can be downloaded from here.

Finally, embedded below are the videos that have been made available.

Related posts:

• Beyond-5G and 6G at #MWC19
• ITU 'Network 2030': Initiative to support Emerging Technologies and Innovation looking beyond 5G advances

LiFi can be a valuable tool for densification

LiFi has been popping up in the news recently. I blogged about it (as LED-Fi) 10 years back. While the concept has remained the same, many of the limitations associated with the technology has been overcome. One of the companies driving LiFi is Scottish startup called pureLiFi.

I heard Professor Harald Haas at IEEE Glasgow Summit speak about how many of the limitations of LiFi have been overcome in the last few years (see videos below). This is a welcome news as there is a tremendous amount of Visible Light Spectrum that is available for exploitation.

While many discussions on LiFi revolve round its use as access technology, I think the real potential lies in its use as backhaul for densification.

For 5G, when we are looking at small cells, every few hundred meters, probably on streetlights and lamp posts, there is a requirement for alternative backhaul to fiber. Its difficult to run fiber to each and every lamp post. Traditionally, this was solved by microwave solutions but another option available in 5G is Integrated Access and Backhauling (IAB) or Self-backhauling.

A better alternative could be to use LiFi for this backhauling between lamp posts or streetlights. This can help avoid complications with IAB when multiple nodes are close by and also any complications with the technology until it matures. This approach is of course being trialed but as the picture above shows, rural backhaul is just one option.

LiFi is being studied as part of IEEE 802.11bb group as well as its potential is being considered for 5G.

Here is a vieo playlist explaining LiFi technology in detail.




Further reading:

• O2 uses light to transmit data in latest network trial
• IEEE Task Force Works on Standard for Light Communications
• Learn How Li-Fi Works from Its Inventor, Harald Haas
• Light Communications for Wireless Local Area Networking
• LiFi can bring enhanced connectivity to your workspace, while also enhancing data security