Questions & Answers on 5G

England has allocated the following frequency bands for 5G:Office of Communications (Ofcom) made licence-exempt spectrum available under a technology-neutral regime in the 57 - 71 GHz band, which could be used for future 5G services.Ofcom has also decided to enable local access to spectrum in the 26 GHz band (24.25–26.5 GHz) available on a shared-spectrum basis, but only for indoor use.In Ju...read more

The following 5G frequency bands have been allocated in New Zeland:New Zealand’s Radio Spectrum Management (RSM) announced in May 2020 that the 3.5 GHz (n78) band auction has been canceled due to constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and have decided for a direct allocation process instead.In June 2020, offers were made for the early access of 3.5 GHz band. This resulted in 40 MHz of ...read more

As the 5G standardization effort moves forward, mmWave channel measurement campaigns continue to be a focus for the entire industry. The challenge with mmWave spectrum is that it is not well understood and the deployment models may in fact be very different from traditional cellular networks below 6 GHz. mmWave beams are highly directional and the mmWave channels change very rapidly, hence, it is ...read more

5G proposes faster data rates, lower latency, and increased capacity while addressing new use cases. Unlike prior wireless evolutions, 5G proposes radically different architectures to meet these objectives. As we draw closer to the December 2017 deadline for 3GPP Standardization body to finalize the first 5G specifications, one of the most critical steps is to measure the wireless channel at possi...read more

As the planet upgrades to 5G, connectivity will be an increasingly important factor in consumer electronics and industrial implementations, ranging from smartwatches and laptops to inventory management systems and commercial fleet monitoring. The fast, safe, and reliable wireless transfer of data will be essential to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and other commercial applications, as we...read more

The air around us all is a sea of radio emissions from a few tens of kHz up to tens of GHz and transmitters' power levels from milliwatt power to megawatts for the biggest ‘longwave’ broadcast stations. We’re all perhaps familiar with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and many RF-base TV remotes, car keys for example, but an exploding area is 5G, using typically 2.5 – 3.7 GHz ba...read more

While the 3GPP Release 17 specifications are being finalized, 3GPP has already started to lay the foundations for the next version, Release 18. 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is expected to publish the initial set of guidelines for 3GPP Release 18 in December 2021. They expect to have a complete standard published by March 2024. Although Release 18 is at a very early stage, it is expect...read more

To most end-users, wireless is just wireless: “Cellular, Wi-Fi, whatever, just get me to my digital content and applications.” This in itself is an extraordinary achievement. The fact that consumers can shift from cellular to Wi-Fi multiple times per day without even noticing is a testament to how far we’ve come as an industry. These are two very different technologies, using dif...read more