A Lot To Expect In The Next 5G Spectrum

The 5G coverage may still be sparse, and the world is still trying to understand how it works or affects us, but the people that define networking standards won't stop working on it.

The 3GPP, which is a group of organizations that develop protocols for mobile telecoms, just announced the official completion of Release 16 (Rel-16). They are calling this Phase 2 for the 5G system, and it will expand the use of networks by vehicles and IoT devices, and tap into unlicensed spectrum as well.

One of the many companies that contributes ideas and technologies that eventually get adopted into 5G protocols is Qualcomm, and it also published blog posts today about Rel-16. Of course, Qualcomm wants the public to know all about its inventions that have been adopted and will be used by the telecomms industry, but this information does help everyone to understand how the upcoming changes will work.

According to Qualcomm vice president of engineering John Smee, there are six key "invention areas... that are core to continued 5G evolution." These are unlicensed spectrum, advanced power saving and mobility, high-precision positioning, sidelink, mission-critical design and new deployment models.

There are also other areas of evolution coming in Release-16, but there is a need to dig deeper into the 3GPP’s notes to analyze those. For now, here is what is known and expected and what it means.

Unlicensed spectrum for greater access and bandwidth First, Rel-16 will enable support for unlicensed spectrum use in two modes of operation — license assisted access (LAA) and standalone. When tapping into unlicensed spectrum, users may see a string of characters "5G NR-U," with the U standing for unlicensed. 5G NR is what we know of as cellular 5G today, just as LTE was another moniker for 4G. LAA means that carriers can tap into unlicensed spectrum to boost 5G bandwidth, like they’re already doing with LTE LAA.

Power savings and mobility Most 5G devices today are chunkier than their LTE counterparts, largely due to the bigger batteries they have to house to support the power-sucking tech. Rel-16 features a bunch of energy-saving features, including Qualcomm’s wakeup signal (WUS). It will prevent receivers from continually checking for a signal and draining the battery, and instead using a lower-power process that only wakes up the device when a WUS is detected. There’s also improved carrier aggregation control to make that process less energy consuming by powering down secondary carriers when not in use.

Other updates There’s a lot more coming in the second phase of 5G, including better cellular positioning, improvements to vehicular communications and general infrastructure enhancements. These mostly build on technologies already existing in Release 15, like supporting coordinated driving and sensor sharing in smart cars and improving latency and synchronization in vehicles.