Gigabit LTE, as demonstrated by Ericsson and Huawei, sounds impressive (see separate item), but it is thrown into the shade by more blue-sky tests reported by Nokia Bell Labs and Mitsubishi, using putative 5G techniques to achieve 30Gbps and 20Gbps respectively.
One of the first announcements from Bell Labs under its latest ownership was the demo of a system which not only reached the 30Gbps peak speed, but could also support a million simultaneous connections in the same cell.
The peak rates were achieved by aggregrating a range of mobile and fixed technologies into one “ultra-capacity” stream, and a combination of techniques were employed to enable massive density and very low latency – the qualities required for some of the 5G IoT applications envisaged, such as autonomous vehicles and advanced virtual reality. These techniques included new waveforms, connectionless messaging and application-based latency.
Professor Frank Fitzek, chair of the communication networks group at Technische Universität Dresden, which is coordinating the 5G Lab Germany project, said: “With our expertise in 5G communication systems, we are collaborating closely with Nokia to realise a new kind of low latency 5G services also known as Tactile Internet. Low latency communication, together with security and resilience, enables ubiquitous steering and control of remote objects and devices like driverless connected cars, industry robots, and remote surgery. These capabilities improve efficiency and allow for new use cases in industry sectors like mobility, manufacturing, and healthcare.”
Marcus Weldon, president of Bell Labs and now Nokia CTO, said: “5G will give birth to the next phase of human possibilities, bringing about the automation of everything. This automation, driven by a smart, invisible network, will create new businesses, give rise to new services and, ultimately, free up more time for people.”
Meanwhile, Mitsubishi Electric is also eyeing ultra-dense networks with its new multibeam multiplexing radio technology for 5G base stations. Its approach combines tens of active phased-array antennas with massive antenna elements (massive APAAs), plus a new pre-coding technology for parallel transmission of data streams. This combination will enable rates of about 20Gbps in high frequency spectrum bands. Full details will be announced at the IEICE Technical Committee on Radio Communication Systems in Tokyo on March 2.
Mitsubishi’s massive APAA technology is already in commercial use in satellites and other systems but is now being examined for radio networks as the industry becomes interested in the potential of massive MIMO as a way to offset propagation loss in the high frequency bands which are expected to play an important role in meeting rising capacity demands in the 2020s.
Another feature of the Mitsubishi development aims to reduce interference issues in dense urban networks. It proposes a non-linear multi-diagonalization pre-coding technology which can remove interference without the need to lower transmit power and so reduce speeds.