Potential first steps in 5G New Radio

Opinion Paper June 21, 2017

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Focusing on Spectrum, Sharing and Deployment Issues

While in the past, every ~10years a new technology was introduced to fulfil the new or increased demands, the next evolution of 5G technology intends to break with this tradition. In the long term 5G will be much more than the simple evolution of mobile broadband. 5G is designed as key enabler of the next generation of infrastructures that will support the digital transformation of processes in all economic sectors and the growing consumer market demand.

In the future with 5G-NR, we will see different spectrum owners, different spectrum users with dedicated access to some parts of the spectrum, all using the same (own or shared) hardware components and (potentially) same software, adapted to their individual purposes. 5G will enable new markets for suppliers aside telecommunication service providers. Enterprises or PPDR service providers etc. might deploy their own (standardized) equipment (HW&SW) using licensed or unlicensed spectrum at least in a locally limited range. New networks might be deployed and operated within unlicensed spectrum with LAA-capabilities, either 4G or 5G, depending on latency and other requirements.

This paper starts a series of detailed views on latest evolutions in 5G-RAN, 5G-Core, slicing, SDN/NFV, security, edge computing et al. in close cooperation with commercial use case considerations. The paper emphasizes some practical challenges of network deployments at different spectrum bands. To keep deployment cost reasonable, potential opportunities with slicing and sharing of equipment arise in radio and core networks within 5G evolution. One purpose is to indicate some of the latest trends in 5G development and direction around 5G-NR, new spectrum and sharing opportunities, and highlight implications for special deployments.

Author Dr. Jann-Erik Dietert