Qualcomm mmWave 5G: 4X Internet Speed
2020 are already two-thirds of the past, the global 5G construction is in full swing, there are already 35 countries and regions have deployed 5G networks, more than 80 operators began 5G commercial, this year is expected to ship 200 million 5G mobile phones.
China is undoubtedly the largest 5G market, as of June there were 100 million 5G users in the country, and the year is expected to develop to 200 million users, while the new 5G base stations 800,000, accounting for more than 70% of the global share.
By the end of this year, the world’s 5G should be able to say the completion of the first wave of construction, 5G in large cities is almost universal, but this is not the end of 5G has just begun, because there is better behind, especially 5G to achieve the leap from can be used to good use, millimeter wave technology is also time to debut.
On August 27, the GSMA Association held an in-depth interpretation workshop on millimeter wave technology, and Dr. Tao Luo, director of engineering and technology at Qualcomm, gave a keynote speech titled “Realizing Millimeter Wave Mobility to Unleash the Full 5G Potential,” introducing the latest advances in 5G millimeter wave technology and demonstrating the results of Qualcomm’s continued investment and latest efforts in 5G millimeter wave.
The Less Familiar Millimeter-wave: 4X Faster 5G Internet Speeds Depend on It
When it comes to 5G, the overwhelming propaganda we are already familiar with, 1Gbps or more network speed is its trademark advantages, extremely fast downloads, but the specific 5G technology we may not understand enough, especially millimeter wave 5G.
5G is a collection of a variety of technologies, just on the frequency band is divided into two parts – FR1 and FR2, the former frequency range is 450MHz – 6GHz, also known as the sub-6GHz band, which is the most common, and is currently the mainstream.
The FR2 band has a frequency range of 24GHz – 100GHz, also known as the millimeter wave (mmWave) band, and has more than 25 times the bandwidth of the Sub-6GHz band, and the higher the frequency and bandwidth, the faster the network speed, so one of the significant advantages of mmWave 5G is faster network speed.
Operators promoting 5G commercially are claiming download speeds of 1Gbps or more, but it’s not easy to get there in practice.
Ookla’s latest data analysis shows that the average 5G network speed in the sub-6GHz band is about 225Mbps, while the millimeter-wave band can achieve 900Mbps, with peak speeds of more than 2Gbps.
So one of the advantages of millimeter wave is to have higher speed, the average speed is 4 times faster than the current sub-6GHz band 5G, the difference is very obvious, especially some applications that need high bandwidth, such as ultra-high-definition video and so on, millimeter-wave can achieve shorter transmission time, or even instantaneous.
It is the advantage of millimeter-wave high-speed rate, can form a golden partner with the sub-6GHz band 5G, especially in indoor occasions, such as shopping malls, airports, high-speed rail stations, and other crowded environments, ultra-high-speed millimeter-wave 5G can increase network capacity, to solve the 5G last mile problem.
Millimeter-wave challenges big Qualcomm show muscle: 5G ride on the “rocket.”
Millimeter-wave 5G has obvious advantages, but on the other hand, there are also greater challenges – high-frequency band needs from the front-end RF to baseband chips, and then to the application side of the full range of supporting facilities, but also faces short transmission distances, easy to be interfered with and other shortcomings, technical and commercial challenges are very big, requiring industry manufacturers to work together to break through the bottleneck little by little.
As the current mobile industry leader, Qualcomm has been researching and promoting mobile network technology for more than 30 years, and 5G handsets, modules and other devices based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon technology platform are now the mainstream of 5G technology in the sub-6GHz band.
Likewise, Qualcomm started millimeter wave-related technology research and development years ago and has made several technological breakthroughs that have made millimeter-wave commercialization a little bit of reality.
According to Dr. Luo Tao’s introduction, Qualcomm has proposed a package of solutions to the problems of limited coverage, high cost, signal attenuation and high terminal requirements of millimeter-wave 5G, overcoming path loss with co-location technology to achieve wide coverage, while achieving line-of-sight and super line-of-sight transmission, and adaptive beam technology to solve the problem of millimeter-wave signal blocking.
In short, in millimeter-wave technology, the previous bottlenecks that hinder commercial breakthroughs, Qualcomm has introduced a series of the modem, RF and antenna solutions, making millimeter-wave in smartphones to achieve commercial is no longer “impossible task”, but gradually become a reality.
In February, Qualcomm officially announced the Snapdragon X60 baseband, which not only uses the 5nm process but is also the world’s first 5G modem and RF system to support both millimeter-wave and sub-6GHz band aggregation, enabling operators to maximize the use of spectrum resources to improve network capacity and coverage.
The Snapdragon X60 also supports 5G FDD-FDD and TDD-TDD carrier aggregation and Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) and includes the world’s first 5G FDD-TDD carrier aggregation solution for the sub-6GHz band.
The Snapdragon X60 is also paired with the new Qualcomm QTM535 millimeter-wave antenna module, which is designed to deliver outstanding millimeter-wave performance.
Even more impressive, the Snapdragon X60 achieves network speeds of 7.5Gbps and provides operators with a flexible and reliable way to deploy their networks to expand coverage, increase network capacity, and accelerate 5G adoption.
5G technology continues to evolve as China’s millimeter-wave 5G sets sail
After Qualcomm solved the technical bottlenecks, the millimeter-wave commercial is now going into the fast lane, it can become a powerful complement to the 6GHz band, the future can be expanded to an indoor high-speed network, public networks, and enterprise private network and other areas, popular high-speed network.
As small as offices, as large as stadiums and even airports and railway stations, these places can rely on millimeter waves to achieve network coverage of more than 1Gbps. Not only mobile phones can be used, computers, XR and other equipment can also use it to connect the world.
Besides, millimeter-wave in China, the world’s largest 5G market also ushered in new development opportunities, 6GHz band 5G construction will be initially completed this year, the future need to further optimize the network coverage, enhance the experience of 5G network.
According to the GSMA Association, the economic benefits from the use of millimeter-wave bands in China are expected to generate about $104 billion by 2034, which is about half of the estimated contribution of millimeter-wave bands in the Asia-Pacific region (which is expected to reach $212 billion).
The economic benefits of 5G millimeter waves are so significant that they cannot be missed by any means. Back in July 2017, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) approved new millimeter-wave test bands, including 26 GHz and 38 GHz, with a combined spectrum resource of 7.75 GHz, and domestic research has been uninterrupted.
On November 1, 2019, Qualcomm and ZTE announced that the IMT-2020 (5G) promotion group organized by the two sides have successfully realized China’s first smartphone-based 5G millimeter-wave interoperability test (IoDT) on October 19.
Qualcomm has already entered into cooperation with China’s Mobile, Unicom, China Telecom and many other mobile phone brands, and China’s 5G millimeter wave is expected to officially set sail in 2021, through the sub-6GHz band + millimeter wave deployment strategy, to truly realize the 5G vision of “several gigabits of speed, large capacity, wide-coverage, and low latency”.
Note: Orignal article published on mydrivers, by author Xianrui
