In a previous post I referenced a paper of Keysight as a good starting point to understand how Active Antenna Systems (AAS) that have been specified for 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR) could improve overall capacity in a cell and extend the cell range. Today, I have found another interesting paper on the topic that … Continue reading 5G Active Antenna Systems (AAS) Revisited
If you are interested in how a 5G EN-DC Option 3 connection is set-up between the mobile device and different components in the network the best but also the hardest way is to look up the procedures in a number of different 3GPP specifications. 3GPP TS 37.340 is a good starting point for EN-DC. Another … Continue reading 5G EN-DC Option 3 – Call Flows
Speaking about how much spectrum is needed by a network operator to make a difference with 5G, I had a closer look at how the German telco regulator wants to go forward with the auction of spectrum in the 3.6 GHz band. The spectrum auction is scheduled to take place in 2019 and the details … Continue reading 5G Spectrum For Germany – How Much For Whom?
While in Europe, most network operators have the 3.x GHz band in mind when thinking about 5G deployments. Some network operators in the US, however, want to launch 5G in the mmWave bands in the 20-50 GHz range. So how will antennas in mobile devices look like for these bands?
Every now and then I get the question why virtually all network operators that want to offer 5G mobile service go for the non-standalone setup first that requires LTE as the anchor instead of going directly to a standalone setup. There are a number of reasons for this but I guess that spectrum availability is … Continue reading Why Not Standalone 5G From The Beginning?
I recently came across this paper of Huawei on 5G Spectrum matters and one paragraph in particular caught my attention: “[…] inter-operator synchronisation and alignment of uplink/downlink transmissions (slot and frame synchronization) is […] necessary for efficient deployment of 5G NR networks in unpaired assignments.” In other words this sentence says that network operators using … Continue reading 5G TDD: Synchronization Across Networks Required?
One thing I’ve been wondering for some time now is how in 5G EN-DC, user data is split between the 4G and 5G base station in a way that takes changing RF conditions into account. It’s no good to just assign a certain data rate to the 4G and 5G side when a split bearer … Continue reading 5G EN-DC: Flow Control Between 4G and 5G
This is a follow up post to my original post on 5G EN-DC, the LTE/5G Dual Connectivity (DC) variant of 3GPP 5G. About a year has passed and a lot of progress has been made in 3GPP TS 37.340, which describes the interworking between the LTE eNB and the 5G NR gNB. One thing that … Continue reading 5G EN-DC: Let’s Talk About Signaling – SRB1/2, SRB-3, Split-SRB
One thing I find quite interesting from a historical point of view is, that the first 5G networks will be based on TDD instead of FDD, at least on the 5G side of the equation.
These days, there is a lot of hype in the press about the race to get 5G networks off the ground. All press reports I’ve come across so far are about non-standalone network deployments in which the 4G network is the anchor for the connection and 5G resources are added when available. For an intro … Continue reading Still Lots of ‘Red Text’ in the 5G NR Standalone RRC Spec