The 3GPP has told the industry to get cracking on standardising the air interface for 5G.
The standards body wants the “5G New Radio” (NR) to be frozen by June 2018, which should help vendors have devices ready for the planned 2020 date for 5G standards to be ready to fly.
Behind the radio, there will be two architectures: one, called standalone, will be all-5G with a new control plane; the other, non-standalone, will graft the new air interfaces onto the LTE control plane.
The air interfaces will have to support both sub-6 GHz frequency, and the emerging bands above 6 GHz.
The standardisation effort will target “enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), and “ultra-reliable and low latency communications” (URLCC) applications. The latter, Vulture South believes, is a cumbersome way of describing the much-touted Internet of Things.
By September 2016, the 3GPP work plan stipulates that the requirements for the radio interfaces be completed. Layer 1 and Layer 2 specs would then be completed by December 2017, with an initial focus on licensed bands.
The 3GPP announcement stresses that both radio and protocol design be forward compatible, “as this will be key for phasing-in the necessary features, enabling all identified usecases, in subsequent releases of the 5G specification”. ®
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Intel Announces XMM 8060 5G & XMM 7660 Category 19 LTE Modems, Both Due in 2019
Intel last week announced that its first commercial 5G modem, the XMM 8060, is now under development and will ship in a couple of years. As part of the announcement, the company reiterated its plans to offer a top-to-bottom XMM 8000 family of 5G modems for various applications, including smartphones, PCs, buildings and vehicles. In addition, the company announced its XMM 7660 Cat-19 LTE modem that supports download speeds of up to 1.6 Gbps, which will be available in 2019.
At present, Intel's 5G Mobile Trial Platform is used to test 5G technologies in different locations around the world. For example, one of such devices installed aboard the Tallink Silja Europa cruise ship is used to enable Internet connectivity to passengers while in port in Tallinn, Estonia, (where another 5G MTP is installed) and the nearby area. Meanwhile, Intel's 5G Modem for client applications is evolving as well. Intel said that devices powered by the silicon can now make calls over the 28 GHz band. The 5G MTP will be used for its purposes for a while and will even gain new capabilities over time, but the company is working on a family of commercial modems that will be used for mass applications sometimes in 2019 and onwards. The Intel XMM 8000-series multi-mode modems will operate in both sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave global spectrum bands, combining support for existing and next-gen radios. Intel does detail the whole lineup two years before the launch but indicates that it will be able to address smartphones, PCs, vehicles, and fixed wireless consumer premise equipment (CPE).
Previously: ITU Defines "5G" as up to 20 Gbps, 2018 Olympics Demo Planned
5G Gets a Shot in the Arm From the FCC
3GPP Sets 2018 as Freeze Date for 5G Air Interfaces
5G Draft Technical Requirements Announced
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday July 02 2016, @11:53PM
Why are we chasing yet another handset obsoleting technology when carriers are just barely getting LTE to most of the towers. And nowhere have I ever seen the promised speeds from any architecture. Certainly not LTE speed. [androidauthority.com]
Maybe its time to enforce promises made in the past before we let them set new standards.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday July 03 2016, @12:30AM
5G seems like an attempt to kill Wi-Fi (the high bandwidth part) with Internet of Things thrown in (on a different band).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 03 2016, @04:19AM
Why are we chasing yet another handset obsoleting technology when carriers are just barely getting LTE to most of the towers.
They're pretty much ubiquitous in Australia. Even in high-density CBD areas during peak hours I can pull an easy 40Mbit. 120Mbit most of the rest of the time. Just steer clear of Optus and their MVNOs.
I'm pretty sure Europe and Asia are in similar situations. Get a move on.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday July 03 2016, @07:26PM
pretty much ubiquitous in Australia.
And a look at the deployment map in the link I posted above will show why. Most of Australia is using category 11 standard, and most of the US is using category 4.
From the chart (scroll up from the map):
Category 12 600 Mbps download 100 Mbps upload
Category 10 450 Mbps download 100 Mbps upload
Category 4 150 Mbps download 50 Mbps upload
(Australia is the only country that uses Category 11. You have to guess its exact speed specs because the article doesn't even have it in the tables. Its probably between 10 and 12, perhaps with slower upload speed).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Sunday July 03 2016, @06:04PM
That's America. From what I understand, North America has poor 4G because it was the first continent to implement it. The speeds aren't as fast and the equipment is older. Europe, Asia, and Australia have a much better 4G implementation because they implemented it after North America, so things were more standardized and faster. It looks like that may be the case for 5G as well.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday July 03 2016, @07:05PM
That may have been true of the entire cellular development for the last 20 years.
But You have to wonder why it is true today.
First, 4g means nothing anymore because the term was never nailed down, and the carriers each decide it was something different. LTE was copyrighted and officially defined, BUT still you will not find anywhere in the US that you are actually capable of receiving data at the specified rate. It just doesn't happen in real life. (Where I live I found out that LTE was being tested two months before it was turned up, and cajoled the APN settings from my friend at At&T. My then-new phone was capable, and it was astoundingly fast, easily meeting the specs. Two months later when it went live it was limited to less than 1/4 of the test speeds. Today its crap).
Density of handsets may also play a part. But with cheaper cell service in the EU, I can't believe the handset density is any less there.
Personally I believe the carriers rate-limit intentionally, to allow for future demand, The price for service has been going down lately, so you can't say they are holding it back so they can charge more.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Sunday July 03 2016, @01:01AM
how about we just use a data communication protocol like TCP with snazzy extensions for battery saving purposes and then build everything else (e.g. voice communications) on top of it? seriously, all this shit is over-engineered.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Adamsjas on Sunday July 03 2016, @04:44AM
Um, that is what we are doing. Its all TCP.
But here we are talking about the radio, you know, the part that replaces the cat5 cable.
Its a whole different layer.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Sunday July 03 2016, @10:20AM
seriously, all this shit is over-engineered.
You're suggesting reworking the whole networking stack, despite that it works fine, and you're complaining about over-engineering?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 03 2016, @07:51PM
He has no idea what he is talking about.
This is the physical layer and datalink layers. Everything above that *is* IP.