Qualcomm, Ericsson and AT&T – at the CES 2017 – announced 5G New Radio trials to accelerate 5G deployments.
Conducting interoperability testing and over-the-air field trials based on the expected 5G New Radio (NR) specifications being developed by 3GPP is expected to move the mobile ecosystem to faster 5G deployment based on standards-compliant 5G NR infrastructure and devices.
The 5G trials will support operation in millimeter Wave (mmWave) spectrum, aiming to accelerate commercial deployments in the 28GHz and 39GHz bands. The trial of 5G NR mmWave technologies, which will utilize wide bandwidths available at these higher frequency bands to increase network capacity, expects to achieve multi-gigabit per second data rates.
5G technology will support consumer connectivity requirements for emerging consumer mobile broadband experiences such as virtual reality, augmented reality and connected cloud services. 5G NR mmWave technology will assist telecom operators to offer cost-effective multi-gigabit Internet service to more homes and businesses.
The 5G trials will utilize device from Qualcomm Technologies and base station prototype solutions from Ericsson, along with spectrum from AT&T, to simulate real-world scenarios across a set of use cases and deployment scenarios.
The 5G trials will employ 3GPP 5G NR Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna technology with adaptive beamforming and beam tracking techniques to deliver sustained mobile broadband communications at the higher frequency bands, including non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environments and device mobility.
The 5G trials will use scalable OFDM-based waveforms and a new flexible framework design that are also expected to be part of the 5G NR specifications.
Matt Grob, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Qualcomm Technologies; Tom Keathley, senior vice president, wireless network architecture and design of AT&T; and Ulf Ewaldsson, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Ericsson are driving the 5G trials in the US.
The interoperability testing and 5G trials starting in the second half of 2017 will track closely with the first 3GPP 5G NR specification that will be part of Release 15, the global 5G standard, which will use both sub-6 GHz and mmWave spectrum bands.
