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Qualcomm, ZTE, and China Mobile have announced plans to conduct interoperability testing and over-the-air field trials based on the 5G New Radio (NR) specifications being developed by 3GPP. The trials will operate in sub-6 GHz mid-band spectrum at 3.5 GHz and intend to drive the mobile ecosystem toward rapid validation and commercialization of 5G NR technologies at scale, enabling commercial network launches based on 3GPP Rel-15 standard compliant 5G NR infrastructure and devices.
The interoperability testing and trials will launch in China starting in the second half of 2017, with the goal of the trials being to showcase how 5G NR technologies can efficiently achieve multi-gigabit per second data rates at lower latency and better reliability than today’s network, Qualcomm stated in a company release.
The announcement confirms reports that China Mobile is planning to accelerate its schedule for 5G development. The company is said to be looking to keep abreast of mobile telecom carriers in the US, Europe, Japan and South Korea in 5G development. After large-scale testing of 5G networks in 2017, China Mobile aims to continue with deployment testing in 2018, and commercial operations starting in 2020, the report stated.
Previously at Mobile World Congress 2015, China Mobile, indicated that it planned to propose China-developed 5G technology specifications to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2020, begin 5G field testing at the end of 2020, and deploy 5G commercial operations in 2024.
The current trials will utilize device prototype and base station solutions from Qualcomm Technologies and ZTE respectively, and follow guidelines from China Mobile.
The focus of the trials will be on 5G NR operation in sub-6 GHz mid-band spectrum at 3.5 GHz, which Qualcomm believes is a critical band in China for achieving ubiquitous coverage and capacity since the market will potentially need to address a large number of 5G use cases.
The trial will make use of advanced 3GPP 5G NR technologies including Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna technology, adaptive self-contained TDD, beamforming techniques, scalable OFDM-based waveforms to support wider bandwidths, advanced coding and modulation schemes, and a new flexible, low-latency slot structure based design.
The interoperability testing and trials, which will launch in China starting in the second half of 2017, are intended to track closely with, the first 3GPP 5G NR specification that will be part of Release 15 – the global 5G standard that will make use of both sub-6 GHz and mmWave (30-300Ghz spectrum bands).
Business opportunities related to 5G equipment and services are expected to start emerging in 2018, with 5G chipset suppliers expected to begin releasing 5G chips to vie for the market in the second half of 2017, Digitimes recently reported.
The the 28GHz and 3.5GHz are the two frequency bands to be available for 5G services. Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung and HiSilicon Technologies are expected to release chips for the 3.5GHz frequency band. Qualcomm and Intel are expected to launch chipset solutions for 5G equipment supporting 28GHz frequency band in the second half of 2017, while Samsung Electronics is likely to release comparable chips during the same period, said the sources.
However, there are challenges to starting 5G commercial operations in 2020. 5G chips may only be initially available in 2018, with 5G-enabled terminal devices launching beginning the first half of 2019. Additionally, the most advanced 5G technology specifications have not yet completely met the ITU’s requirements.
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