The mobile vendors continue to duke it out in the race to ‘5G’, and are increasingly eager to share the results of their R&D activities in both cellular and WiFi technologies, some of which could find their way into the next generation of wireless standards – or even into nearer term upgrades, which Huawei, predictably enough, has dubbed ‘4.5G’.
There is always a ‘.5G’ in every mobile generation – for GSM it was EDGE, for W-CDMA it was HSPA, and so on. This highlights the artificiality of the big air interface step upgrades – in reality, many other elements go to make a network perform, and those usually evolve out of step with the 3GPP baseline. So while carriers get some benefit from the air interface change, they then need to enhance their networks further to deliver the maximum gains.
Arguably, the LTE-Advanced additions are already ‘4.5G’, and a broader definition could also encompass greater integration of WiFi via Hotspot 2.0, changes in the core and BSS/OSS, and even the beginnings of virtualization (though in reality, that really is likely to define ‘5G’). Huawei’s president of wireless R&D, Ying Weimin, believes ‘4.5G’ will support peak data rates of 10Gbps while stationary, latency of 10ms, and support for 100,000 mobile connections within a square kilometer. It would have far better machine-to-machine support than current LTE standards and a flat architecture capable of supporting many service providers. All these qualities, if achieved, would make it particularly suited to the smart city, a market which Huawei has targeted intensively.
This architecture would be a “forerunner of 5G” and could be deployed in the 2016-2020 timeframe, before 5G, he argued, providing an interim step between LTE-Advanced and 5G, especially if the latter comes with a new air interface, which may delay its emergence in the commercial mainstream. Huawei is promising to show off a prototype of its 4.5G concept at its MBB Global Forum in Shanghai next month, and then to carry out a demonstration with UK operator EE.
But Dan Warren, the GSMA’s senior director of technology, was keen to avoid yet more ill-defined labels entering the mobile vernacular. He told Mobile World Live: “4.5G is a marketing term that seems to have entered industry parlance to fill the gap in divergent industry perception of 5G. A vendor’s view of 5G is that it will have a new, higher speed, lower latency radio technology, but operators are increasingly looking to 5G to be about consolidation of existing technology via heterogeneous networks, expanding coverage, improving network economics (by reducing total cost of ownership) and enabling the Internet of Things, but without a new radio technology being required. It seems that vendors exclusively are using the term 4.5G to describe what operators want 5G to be.”
It is certainly true that many operators are less interested in platform change, and more in combining many technologies seamlessly, and increasingly in a software-driven way, in order to create vast pools of efficient capacity. In this context, it will be important for 3GPP and WiFi (and other) technologies to come closer together and evolve in step in terms of interworking. Samsung has been showing off advances on both sides of the fence this week, some of which will no doubt be pushing for a place in future standards, whatever ‘G’ they may belong to.
The race to break speed records in WiFi is almost as intense as it is in cellular, and Samsung is a prominent name in both. The Korean firm has been demonstrating ‘5G’ prototypes hitting multi-gigabit speeds, but WiFi can support even higher data rates, and the company says it has achieved up to tenfold increase on current speeds.
In both WiFi and cellular R&D, the key to blistering speeds is usually the combination of techniques such as advanced MIMO, with high frequency spectrum and advanced interference mitigation. Samsung says it has developed a version of WiGig (the WiFi-like standard for the 60GHz band) which boosts the current maximum theoretical data rate for a consumer device fivefold – and in terms of real world average speeds, the gap is 10 times.
The prototype system enables a 1Gbyte movie to be transferred in under three seconds and uncompressed high definition video to be streamed in real time. Like other next generation WiFi efforts, Samsung says its technology removes the gap between theoretical and actual speeds, and of course it will hope that its breakthrough will give it an influential position in emerging standards, as well as differentiation for its own future products.
“Samsung has successfully overcome the barriers to the commercialization” of the 60GHz WiFi technology, claimed Kim Chang Yong, head of a Samsung R&D center, in a statement. “New and innovative changes await Samsung’s next generation devices, while new possibilities have been opened up for the future development of WiFi technology.”
Amid rising competition in its heartland smartphone business, Samsing is investing in R&D in many areas which could extend its business model, including software and media platforms, enterprise platforms and cutting edge infrastructure for ‘5G’, which is expected to include technologies derived both from LTE and WiFi. The first products to be targeted with 60GHz WiFi are likely to be audiovisual home and mobile media devices, telecoms infrastructure and medical systems, said Samsung.
Samsung’s rivals are all working on enhancing WiFi for higher speed and better quality of experience in future. For instance, Huawei recently demonstrated 10Gbps connections in conventional 5GHz spectrum.
Over on the 3GPP side of the fence, Samsung has tested prototype ‘5G’ connections offering 1.2Gbps downloads to a vehicle moving at 60 miles per hour, with a speed of 7.5Gbps to a stationary device. LTE has a maximum download speed of about 100Mbps, and LTE-A can increase that to a theoretical 3Gbps.