2019!

5G Mobile From Qualcomm

2019 Mobile 5G Phones! blazes on ads across the trade media from
Qualcomm. "You’ll see 5G in 2019 for sure," Qualcomm CEO Steve
Mollenkopf promises. Verizon has begun a huge, rapid deployment of
mmWave, with hundreds of sites installed.
Mollenkopf himself thought it would be 2020, but new technology is
allowing him to chop a year off the schedule. His main foundry, TSMC, has
begun "risk production" of 7 nm chips, the next generation. It's reasonable to
expect volume production in 2019. TSMC is taking delivery in 2018 on
$150M EUV machines to improve critical layers. Steve is going for 2019
because he can.
Verizon will be ready to serve mobile 5G "as soon as phones are available."
China Mobile and AT&T are also looking to build early. They will be
expensive and probably power hogs, but a true gigabit should be possible.
("Gig LTE" will usually be 75-300 megabits to the customer, per
Qualcomm.)
Qualcomm is using Gordon Moore's old tactic, of putting rivals "on a
treadmill." Intel threatens to be a serious competitor, with an investment of
over $5B before their 5G is ready. MediaTek has been gaining market share,
at least until Qualcomm 835, a great design.
Intel made its first killing on the early 1103 memory chip, which
rapidly replaced magnetic core memory in mainframe computers. It was
Intel's alone for a good while, but eventually others matched the chip.
Moore's strategy was to up investment and move to 4K chips. The next
generation would give them a better, more capable product and keep
revenues back up. He also explained that the faster next generation would
put the other guys "on a treadmill," having to divert their own resources
from competing in the 1K generation to prevent falling behind. After that
success, Intel made a practice of increasing spending when challenged, even
in down markets.
Broadcom spent billions on LTE chips before deciding they couldn't find a
market. Three others also fell away a few tears ago. Moore;s Law isn't dead,
but the cost to design chips and stay in the game is now well over $100M.
Few can play at that level.
I don't need a mobile gig, you don't need a mobile gig, but they are coming.
Here's Qualcomm's pr
Making 5G NR mmWave a reality for 2019
smartphones
OCT 5, 2017
Every once in a long while, a new technology comes along that redefines the
boundaries and assumptions that came before it. While it is still being
extensively tested, 5G NR mmWave is emerging as a key technology that
could define the next big moment in the mobile industry, ushering in the
next generation of user experiences and significantly increasing network
capacity.
It is coming at just the right time, too. Mobile networks are facing soaring
demands for mobile data as consumers increasingly utilize mobile devices to
share and consume high-fidelity multi-media. On top of this, as the
capabilities of mobile devices continue to grow — think high-resolution
cameras, 4K video, VR, AR— so does the ever-increasing consumer
demand for faster, better connectivity.
Although the use of bands above 24 GHz for wireless communications is
nothing new, mmWave is a completely new frontier for mobile that is very
compelling as the large bandwidths available at these high frequencies
enables extremely high data rates and significant increases in capacity.
mmWave bands have been utilized for quite some time in fixed, line-of-sight
wireless communications for fixed wireless backhaul and satellite
communications. However, increased propagation loss, susceptibility to
blockage (e.g. hand, head, body, foliage, building penetration), and RFIC
complexity and power-efficiency, has historically made these high-bands not
feasible for mobile communications. That is, until now. 5G NR based
mmWave is changing this, and Qualcomm is leading the way.
There is a decent amount of skepticism in the industry on the ability to make
mobile 5G NR mmWave a commercial reality in 2019 — overcoming the
challenges at these higher frequencies to deliver robust mobile
communications in mobile form factors, like smartphones.
At Qualcomm, we have a long history of solving wireless challenges that
others thought were impossible. We have been working on the key design
elements necessary to harness mmWave bands for usage in mobile
broadband communication systems — proving to both ourselves and the
industry what is feasible and what needs more work. I am very excited to
share with you some of the progress we’ve made on this subject.
Demonstrating sustained mobile broadband communications in real-
world environments
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, we demonstrated
our first-generation 5G mmWave prototype system, operating at 28 GHz.
The prototype system and over-the-air testing was conducted utilizing our
5G mmWave trial network we built at our Research Center in New Jersey.
Our testing went far-beyond the typical 5G mmWave industry demonstration
of a multi-gigabit, line-of-sight mmWave communication link. The testing
showcases how advanced 5G NR adaptive beamforming and beam tracking
techniques can be utilized to deliver robust mobile broadband
communications in real-world environments. These real-world environments
included device mobility inside a moving vehicle, indoor mobility in an
office environment including wall penetration, dynamic body- and hand-
blocking, and fast beam-switching between multiple base stations
(gNodeBs).
Another common area of skepticism for utilizing mmWave bands in mobile
networks is the need for massive small cell deployments to take advantage
of these technologies. This need for many new small cell sites leads some to
believe that even if 5G NR mmWave could deliver robust mobile
communications, it will take many years to reach commercial reality as
deploying all these new sites would take a lot of time and investment by
mobile operators.
5G NR mmWave will require dense network topologies with inter-site
distances of ~150 to 200m. However, based on a set of simulation studies we
recently performed in large cities across the world (results for five global
cities shown below in Figure 2), we have shown that significant outdoor
coverage is possible utilizing existing LTE macro and small cell sites. This
significant outdoor coverage makes mobile deployments based on existing
cell sites possible, especially when considering the tight-interworking of 5G
NR with LTE to fill in the coverage gaps.
We recently demonstrated our San Francisco simulation at Mobile World
Congress Americas (see Figure 3 below). Beyond showcasing decent
(~65%) downlink coverage in an ~10 km2 area of the city, the coverage
simulation also showcased even better coverage (>80%) in a 1
km2downtown section by co-siting with existing LTE dense deployments.
The simulation also showcased that even at the cell edges, 100+ Mbps peak
data rates were possible due to the large channel bandwidths possible at
these high-frequency bands. Although mmWave outdoor-to-indoor coverage
for mobile is not feasible, this decent outdoor mmWave coverage frees up
sub-6 GHz (either LTE or 5G NR) for outdoor-to-indoor capacity. In
addition, outdoor mmWave coverage can be complemented with targeted
indoor mmWave deployments. We plan to publish a whitepaper later this
month that details these network coverage simulations, including new
simulations for indoor environments. In the meantime, more information is
available by downloading our 5G NR mmWave presentation.
The dominant mobile form factor today is, of course, the smartphone. Over
the last 5+ years, RF complexity in our mobile devices has exploded due to
the increasing amount of frequency bands and band combinations. Adding
mmWave to 5G mobile devices will even further increase this complexity as
it will require mmWave RF Front-end (RFFE) modules with multiple
antenna elements for beamforming in X-, Y-, and Z-directions. Furthermore,
multiple locations will be required to account for body- and hand-blocking.
And therefore, another source of skepticism with utilization of mmWave
bands for mobile is whether fitting this RF complexity into a smartphone
form factor is even possible.
We recently announced our new 5G NR mmWave prototype and trial
platform to accelerate mobile deployments for smartphones. The
2nd generation 5G mmWave prototype is based on the 5G New Radio (NR)
Release-15 specifications being developed by 3GPP and will be utilized in
upcoming 3GPP-based 5G NR mmWave interoperability testing and over-
the-air 5G NR trials starting in the second half of 2017. With support for 800
MHz bandwidth and advanced 5G NR technologies including advanced
channel coding, the prototype system is designed to support peak download
speeds of up to 5 gigabits per second.
The UE prototype enables over-the-air testing of real-world mmWave
mobile challenges, such as device and hand-blocking. Additionally, it
provides mobile device OEMs an opportunity to gain an early start at
optimizing their devices for the unique challenges associated with
integrating 5G NR mmWave technologies in form factor-accurate devices.
Making 5G NR mmWave a 2019 commercial reality… in your
smartphone
There is still work to be done in order to make 5G NR mmWave a
commercial reality in 2019.
First and most immediate, the anchor of the 5G NR mobile experience will
be Gigabit LTE. Gigabit LTE is providing the first glimpse of 5G enhanced
mobile broadband today and is an essential upgrade for mobile networks on
the path to 5G. Qualcomm has been leading the way on Gigabit LTE, which
has truly become a global phenomenon in 2017.
On the 5G NR front, the industry is hard at work finalizing the first release
(Rel-15) of the 3GPP technical specifications, including the Non-Standalone
(aka NSA) 5G NR specifications that are expected to be completed at the
end of this year. Our Qualcomm Research 5G NR prototype systems, both
mmWave and sub-6 GHz, were designed to track and drive this
standardization process. As such, these prototype systems are built to
support early 3GPP-compliant 5G NR interoperability testing with
infrastructure vendors starting later this year. This will then lead to 3GPP-
compliant over-the-air trials with mobile network operators that will test 5G
NR mmWave and sub-6 GHz technologies in real-world deployment
scenarios and use cases.
The testing and trials intend to drive the mobile ecosystem toward rapid
validation and commercialization of 5G NR technologies at scale.
Qualcomm Technologies is utilizing learning from the testing and trials to
help continue to drive the ongoing development of the Qualcomm
Snapdragon X50 5G modem family, with the first 3GPP standard-compliant
5G commercial products, including premium smartphones, featuring
Snapdragon X50 5G NR modems expected to be available in 2019.
Although there is still work to do, we are confident that we can achieve this
next big moment in the mobile industry, making 5G NR mmWave a
commercial reality in 2019 mobile networks and mobile devices, including
smartphones. But don’t just take my word — learn more by downloading
our new presentation and watching our recent webinar.