As operators began to deploy 5G, industry organization 3GPP is considering modulating 5G radio signals in other ways.
Power Players: As operators began to launch 5G, some experts say that the industry should choose a more effective debugging method for 5G services.
In 2017, the mobile communications industry organized whether the members of 3GPP debate should accelerate and how to promote the development of 5G standards. A proposal initially made by Vodafone finally won the consent of other members within the organization, the proposal promise to develop 5G technology in multiple aspects while speeding up the deployment of 5G networks.
Adopting this proposal may also mean the promotion of certain decisions, one of which is how to encode 5G network wireless signals. The 3GPP version 15 finally selected for 5 g of the 3GPP is finally selected as the coding option, which is a coding scheme derived from 4G.
However, it is expected that the 3GPP 16th edition, which will be out of the year will include a research team to explore the results of alternative coding standards. To know, the update of wireless standards is a frequent event. In the next generation 5G version, the industry may resolve OFDMs to consume too much power in 5G devices and base stations. Different coding schemes correspond to different power consumption, this is not a small problem, because in order to connect hundreds of billion mobile terminals and Internet of Things devices, 5G needs to deploy more base stations to provide mobile communication services.
"I think operators don't really understand the impact of wireless signal coding standards on mobile phones, and its impact on battery life." James Kamei, RF and Software Definition Radio Research Marketing, US National Instrument Co., Ltd. "5G super high speed is cost, the price is battery consumption."
Kysteri pointed out that power consumption is not limited to 5G mobile phones, he said that China Mobile has always paid attention to its base station's power consumption problem. " According to the general expectation, the power consumed by a single 5G base station is about the three times that of the 4G base station. In addition, more than 4G is covered, more 5G base stations are required.
Although 5G is good, how do you consume so power? Here, OFDM is a culprit not to underestimate. In the OFDM scheme, it is chopped into multiple segments and then transmits these segments simultaneously on a different frequency band, so that these segments are "orthogonal", that is, the segments do not interfere with each other.
Its price is that the OFDM solution has a high peak average power ratio (PAPR). Thus, it is because the orthogonal component signals in the OFDM signal need to be consumed to be consumed, on the one hand, in order to prevent the other component signals from being removed, the receiver on each frequency band needs to consume a lot of energy, at the same time A signal to prevent other components, the transmitter on each frequency band will also consume a large amount of energy. This implementation causes the PAPR value of OFDM, energy efficiency, and other solutions.
Yuan ZTE's chief engineer Yuan said in the wireless standard, said that the high PAPR value is not advisable to some emerging applications of 5G. Yuan is also a member of the research team member of the 3GPP. He pointed out that communication between large-scale devices, such as large-scale Internet of Things deployment, the high power consumption characteristics of OFDM are a big obstacle.
Typically, when multiple devices (such as Internet access devices) are communicated using OFDM, they will be organized using orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), each device allocates a separate spectrum, in their respective Communication within the channel. It is particularly pointed herein, OFDM refers to an encoding method in a single device, and OFDMA is a scheme to ensure that the signals between the various devices within the device group do not interfere with each other. For OFMDA, when establishing a large INT network, the management of all spectrum uses for each device will increase rapidly with the addition of nodes, and will eventually be out of control. 3GPP 10th editions are used to communicate between 5G connected devices, mainly because it is used in the 4G era, and in the 4G era, the Internet is small.
Yuan's team is studying a non-fixed multi-site (NOMA) program that is expected to replace OFDMA. It has the advantage of OFDM, but also allows multiple devices to share the same frequency band.
Yuan believes that efforts have been found, OFDM and OFDMA can meet 5 g of early demand. He said that 5G will first be used by smartphones, large-scale machine communication, etc. will be at least one to two years after completion of 3GPP 16 (currently expected to be completed in December 2019).
However, if mobile network operators want to update their devices to provide NOMA capabilities, it is likely to take an objective cost. "Noma is of course not free," Yuan said. "Especially for the base station, the cost is not ignored." In order to support NOMA, the base station needs to update the software, and may need to replace more advanced receivers, more powerful controllers, or other hardware upgrades.
However, some people such as Kysi is not optimistic about any non-ODMA scheme for mobile industries. "It is possible to have better choices than OFDMA," he said, "but the probability of replacement is not very big. Because it has already implemented OFDMA, this pattern is difficult to change."
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