A few weeks after Huawei showed off its latest networks roadmap under the banner ‘5.5G’, the 3GPP standards body has come up with its own, similar branding, ‘5G-Advanced’.
This echoes the LTE-Advanced label that applied to later releases of the 4G standards, which were often seen as ‘true 4G’, since they delivered most of the full specifications originally set out by the ITU. Similarly, the first 5G release does not deliver the promises of the core ITU requirements, as laid down in IMT-2020, but as later releases increase functionality and capability, the networks will get closer to ‘true 5G’.
The 5G-Advanced label will be applied to Release 18 and beyond. With Releases 15 and 16 already finished, and Release 17 under development, Release 18 is currently scheduled for initial approvals at the end of 2021.
“With Release 18 we enter the second phase of 5G. We have already approved something called ‘5G-Advanced’ starting with Release 18,” Qualcomm’s senior director of technology, Wanshi Chen, told LightReading. Chen was recently named chairman of the 3GPP RAN Plenary.
Qualcomm says 5G-Advanced will contain six key elements (many of which mirror Huawei’s priorities for ‘5.5G’:
- Network designs featuring edge and cloud computing.
- New radio designs that support highly efficient technologies such as full-duplex communications.
- Resilient technologies that block hacks and other threats.
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.
- Coordinated spectrum sharing techniques.
- Services that merge the physical and digital worlds.