FYI – this is a partial report of the new collection of reports I am compiling for my new book, “The Road to 5G Deployment”. The 5G ecosystem seems endless, but we must look at all aspects. The NR is something that will have the true 5G format. It’s going to be the driver for … Continue reading The 5G Ecosystem →
FYI – this is a partial report of the new collection of reports I am compiling for my new book, “The Road to 5G Deployment”.
The 5G ecosystem seems endless, but we must look at all aspects. The NR is something that will have the true 5G format. It’s going to be the driver for most of the 5G radios.
One thing you see all the time is the 5G NR, New Radio. The reason is that the NR is supposed to have the 5G format. What the hell is that? With LTE they could explain exactly what the over the air format looked like. The thing is, as LTE evolution happened there were more and more features that were included. Sure, you all hear of 256 QAM and how that changed everything, but there’s more at play than just a kick-ass modulation. It’s an ecosystem that will be created with the 5G system. We all want to see 5G as something that is over the air, but the reality is more equipment will be needed to make 5G a reality.
If you want to know more about over the air signaling, go to:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_(telecommunication)
* https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1311/1311.2650.pdf
* https://cdn.rohde-schwarz.com/pws/dl_downloads/dl_application/application_notes/1ma187/1MA187_1E_LTE_Beamforming_Mesurments.pdf.
The features were carrier aggregation. This was the part where they could get multiple carriers to all be sent to a device then put together to look like one big pipe. They could do this on the wired side for years, you may know it as multiplexing. Now, they can do it with wireless. But wait, there’s more! Now they can take the carriers from the different spectrum and put it all together as long as the UE device can hear them all at the same time. WOW! But wait, this was all good if it was all LTE, same format, but they also added in Wi-Fi, which works! Find out more at
https://wade4wireless.com/2015/09/08/lwa-laa-lte-u-and-wi-fi/ and https://wade4wireless.com/2017/12/04/what-is-carrier-aggregation/ if you want to know more. They were able to get all the spectrum to work together, like the licensed, lightly licensed, and unlicensed spectrum to work as one larger cohesive unit. More spectrum means more throughput. More throughput means happy end users and spectrum efficiency, sort of.
Spectral efficiency is essential, and this is being looked at with new forms of beamforming. Beamforming was around for a while, but it was out there to help coverage issues and to overcome RF reflections that caused problems. However, today we have 3D beamforming that is way more than that. It is creating the antenna to be more efficient in spectrum use and loading. How can this be made better?
Massive MIMO, where they put more than 32 elements in one antenna, then you could have each element capable of beamforming so that it can communicate with a limited number of user devices with minimal interference. WOW! Now, with these elements, you need to have a radio that could talk to each element individually as well as control the beams of each element. Hence, this is all part of massive MIMO today.
What is NR?
Good question. NR stands for New Radio,