5G & Beyond For Dummies®, Keysight Technologies Special Edition

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Realizing the Vision of 5G
• Stepping Up 5G Device and Base Station Development
• Accelerating the Transformation to )-RAN
• Advancing Virtualization, Cloudification, and MEC
• Expanding Wireless Connectivity to Enable Innovation
• Ten Steps to 5G Deployment Sucess

Introduction

The promise of 5G is faster and more reliable communications. 5G enables the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, wireless broadband, interruption-free video, and the fourth industrial revolution. When you develop 5G technology, understanding design and testing concepts and solutions across multiple dimensions are imperative. In this book, you find out about 5G technologies and their associated challenges. You also discover solutions available to address these challenges and ways you can create new opportunities for your organization.

About this book – 5G for Dummies

• 5G & Beyond For Dummies, Keysight Technologies Special Edition, describes how 5G technologies are evolving. This book is conveniently organized into six chapters that 
• Explain the vision of 5G New Radio (NR) and the path to the 5G vision (Chapter 1)
• Describe 5G device and base station development (Chapter 2)
• Delve into Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) challenges and solutions (Chapter 3)
• Detail virtualization, cloudification, multi-access edge computing (MEC), observability, and security trends in 5G (Chapter 4)
• Explore 5G opportunities and the vision for 6G (Chapter 5)
• List the key steps to 5G deployment success (Chapter 6) 
• Chapter 1 - Realizing the Vision of 5G

The high-bandwidth and real-time capabilities of 5G hold enormous potential for society by enabling many new and unexpected use cases. In this chapter, you find out about the 5G vision, discover more about use cases, read about standards enhancements, and delve deeper into the migration path to 5G.

Looking at 5G New Radio (NR)

5G embodies the breadth and depth of innovative and comprehensive mobile wireless communications technology. The potential of 5G goes well beyond that of its predecessors. Some of the new applications it will enable are 

• Multi-gigabit wireless mobile broadband
• Fixed broadband wireless access
• Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR)
• Autonomous vehicles
• Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications
• The mobile Internet of Things (IoT)
• The wireless industrial IoT (IIoT)

NR is to 5G what Long Term Evolution (LTE) is to 4G. The 5G NR standard continues to evolve to enable faster data rates, improved coverage, lower latency, higher reliability, and greater network flexibility. 

The following sections break down the ins and outs of 5G to help you better understand the importance of the technology from a technical standpoint. 

5G Vision

The vision for the 5G future is bold: It’s much more than just the next iteration of mobile networks. Technological trends including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), AR and VR, and billions of connected devices are pushing the boundaries of the wireless communications system like never before. 

5G technology promises faster, more reliable, and near-instant connections that will universally connect people and things. 5G allows everyone to experience live events and video games in real-time, make phone and video calls that feel close and intimate and pair smart devices with AI to create a customized and personalized environment for everyone. 

5G Use cases

The three use cases defined in 5G NR are as follows: 

• Enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB): eMBB refers to the target 5G peak and average data rates, capacity, and coverage as compared to conventional mobile broadband. eMBB specifies a 5G design capable of supporting up to 20 gigabits per second (Gbps) in the downlink (DL) and 10 Gbps in the uplink (UL). 

• Massive machine-type communications (mMTC): mMTC supports 5G IoT use cases with billions of connected devices and sensors. The use case covers both low-data-rate/ low-bandwidth devices with infrequent bursts of data requiring long battery life as well as very-high-bandwidth/ data-rate devices. 

• Ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC): URLLC focuses on applications that require fail-safe, real-time communications. Examples include autonomous vehicles, the industrial Internet, smart grids, infrastructure protection, and intelligent transportation systems.

3GPP 5G releases

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is an industry consortium responsible for developing standards for mobile telecommunications (protocols, architectures, system requirements, and so on). Release 15 (Rel-15) of the 5G NR specification is the first implementable standard for 5G, and it establishes a flexible foundation to accommodate future releases of 5G features. 

Rel-15 focuses on the high-speed data rates and capacity demands of eMBB.  It specifies a new air interface to enable higher data throughput and lays the groundwork for low latency and higher reliability applications. The use of millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum up to 52.6 gigahertz (GHz) is the key to enabling higher data throughput. At these higher frequencies, a more contiguous spectrum is available to send more data through the channel. Rel-15 specifies a maximum carrier bandwidth of up to 400 megahertz (MHz) and up to 16 component carriers (CCs), and allows multiple carriers to be combined to create up to 800 MHz of channel bandwidth. Flexibility and scalability in the slot structure help support the many new and diverse use cases expected from 5G.

Low latency for 5G

The URLLC use case is partially achieved through a concept called mini-slots. In LTE, transmissions adhere to the standard slot boundaries, but they aren’t optimized for minimal latency.

A standard slot has 14 orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols. As the subcarrier spacing increases, the slot duration decreases. A mini-slot is shorter in duration than a standard slot and can be located anywhere within the slot. A mini-slot is two, four, or seven OFDM symbols long. Mini-slots provide low latency payloads with an immediate start time, without needing to wait for the start of a slot boundary.