5G is coming and we all are curious about what the next generation mobile technology is going to offer!
Though there is still sometime to see real world deployment (First 5G deployment plan is 2020), companies are putting their best efforts to shape the technology up. Among those who shown tremendous interest and working to make things work is Motorola. Now a Lenovo company of course.
In the last 3GPP technical meeting on 5G, Motorola presented a very good white paper on 5G, titled “Views on Next Generation Wireless Access”. Motorola is not the only company who presented their findings though. I will post other 5G white papers and plans from other 3GPP stack-holders in coming days/weeks.
Here is the Motorola presentation on 5G wireless access.
Let’s check out Motorola’s vision on 5G wireless access. Motorola is still using NG (next Generation) as the name for 5G. Which is kind or correct as 3GPP is still working on giving a proper name. 5G is just a marketing name like 2G, 3G, 4G, etc. Like in the past GSM was 2G, UMTS was 3G and LTE was 4G, the next generation mobile technology is waiting to get a new technical name from 3GPP.
The next generation mobile access will try to exploit lower millimeter wave bands for example 27-45 GHz bands. This will give larger bandwidth and interns provide better throughput. The idea is to have minimum 50 Mbps throughput in any condition.
These are some of the views on next generation wireless access:
- mmWave, massive MIMO and very large bandwidths
new waveforms - full duplex
- more flexible radio interface
- support for unlicensed spectrum
- network coding
- backhaul support
- better network architecture.
LTE is already supporting similar requirements (partially) and is using a flat architecture. It will be interesting to see what next generation mobile technology will offer better.
Each generation of wireless technology has some basic requirements to fulfill and 5G is no different. Here are some of the basic requirements which is expected:
- Higher data rate (No brainier). 50 Mbps everywhere
- Real time Video/Voice
- Agile network for diverse service
- Easy deployments and upgrades
- Reduce maintenance cost.
- Support of low-cost energy efficient IoT devices.
- Ultra low-latency and high reliability IoT (Security, traffic, public safety)
To support these new requirement the next generation technology needs a new/better wireless access. The suitable candidates for next generation wireless access (According to the whitepaper) are:
- OFDMA/SC-FDMA
- per-subcarrier (FBMC, GFDM) or subcarrier group (UFMC) filtering using linear/circular conv.
I do not have much idea what benefits this will give to real work scenarios but this is definitely a good topic to discuss about.
What is your view on the next generation wireless access? Will it be same as LTE or 5G needs a new wireless access technology other than OFDMA?
Post your suggestions and comments.