"The real 5g does not need to consider the connection." Dr. Thomas Cameron, director of Wireless Technology Department of ADI company, a big man in the field of communication technology, said this industry "golden sentence" in an interview with the media when he came to China to participate in communication industry activities not long ago. "I once said that really good connectivity should be that we no longer need to consider this issue. I don't emphasize more connections, It's about high-quality connectivity, which is the long-term goal of our industry. " He believes that an important feature of 5g is flexibility. Compared with 4G, it is this flexibility that enables all these new markets and new application scenarios to move forward
At the beginning of 5g deployment, connect
Say the important things three times. The most important thing in communication should undoubtedly be connection stability. Without reliable connection, everything else is empty talk. Thomas, the above sentence can be understood as the ideal state of 5g applications, at least after 5g scale deployment. I'm afraid the initial 5g deployment connectivity is still the main concern. In fact, Thomas also pointed out that ADI believes that the following three application goals will promote the development of 5g: enhanced mobile broadband (embB), massive machine communication (mmtc) and ultra-high reliability and ultra-low delay communication (urllc).
At present, the focus of 5g industry is to enhance mobile broadband and develop to higher network capacity and higher throughput. Increasing the capacity of cellular base stations can be achieved by three measures: obtaining new spectrum, improving base station density and improving spectrum efficiency“ Although we see that new spectrum continues to increase and network density continues to increase, we still need to improve the use of spectrum. " Thomas said, "large scale MIMO has been proved to improve mobile data throughput by three to five times, and will continue to improve." He also pointed out that at present, many mobile operators around the world have completed large-scale MIMO trials, and it is expected that various regions will start the commercial deployment of this technology from 2019 to 2020.
Similar to 3G and 4G deployment, 5g deployment is also facing the reality of going step by step. At present, we can see various technical layouts in the global 5g industry. The United States is mainly engaged in microwave 5g R & D, and many are engaged in R & D below 6GHz in China, Japan and South Korea. For example, 3.5G and 4.8g, we can see that Europe is actually following China“ In fact, it is below 6G and will be deployed in advance. We expect that in many regions, 5g large-scale MIMO will take the lead in using the middle spectrum, and then deploy millimeter wave as the technology matures. " Thomas said.
Software Defined Radio, flexible solution to connectivity during transition
To solve the problem of 5g connectivity, the deployment of base stations is undoubtedly the key. Thomas believes that the initial stage of 5g deployment will basically focus on the construction of macro stations. The operators are most concerned about the density of site deployment and network construction cost. How to solve the short coverage board of 3.5GHz frequency band and reduce the number of new 5g base stations with the help of 4G site infrastructure is also the focus of operators.
"In this regard, ADI has been trying to help system providers solve the problem of smooth transition of different radio technology standards through software radio technology, and provide a reusable radio platform suitable for future development by combining RF to baseband transceiver phy and digital processor." Thomas pointed out. The software defined radio solutions he mentioned include the company's specially established brand radioverse, a platform for a brand-new communication RF technology ecosystem concept.
Under the radioverse design ecosystem platform, ADI has successively launched a variety of star products including ad9371 and ad9375 in recent years. In addition to ADI's rich hardware product portfolio, this system also includes tested PA library, small cell reference design and evaluation suite, and one of its core values is its software definable radio architecture.
"The radio architecture based on software definition can be flexibly configured by software, supporting different frequencies, frequency bands, different systems and different standards, so as to realize the flexibility and universality of the system." Thomas pointed out. Taking the software definition feature of ad9371 as an example, he pointed out that customers can easily change the if at any time, and the bandwidth can also be easily adjusted in the range of 8 MHz to 100 MHz. These features are very important for system customers. For example, when the same base station is to be deployed in different places, the software can customize the features so that they can easily cover the specific frequency band standard of a country through fine tuning, which is particularly important for the current 5g application of sub-6ghz.
If the radio form was first dominated by macro base stations, the deployment scale of small cells and massive MIMO as key underlying technologies to improve network coverage and capacity will surge. At present, small cells have been deployed in China. According to the data disclosed by Adi experts a year ago, more than 80% of small cells use ADI transceiver technology. The integration of Software Defined Radio and transceiver technology is expected to play a key role in the deployment of 5g base stations in the future.
Summary of this paper
At present, due to the coexistence of a variety of wireless communication standards, multi band and multi standard is a hard demand for the majority of equipment manufacturers. However, there has not been a good general hardware platform to support. At this time, it is necessary to design a separate hardware platform for different frequency bands and systems. However, this is time-consuming and laborious, and the system BOM and maintenance cost remain high. The unique advantages of software defined radio are of particular concern in the introduction period of the new standard.
Software defined radio is a radio broadcasting communication technology, which is based on software defined wireless communication protocol rather than hard wired. The frequency band, air interface protocol and functions can be upgraded through software download and update without completely replacing the hardware. In addition to traditional communication equipment, software defined radio is also used in other fields, such as national defense electronics, including handheld or backpack radio, electronic station equipment and radar. Moreover, it can also be applied to test equipment, mainly RF test equipment and communication telemetry measurement equipment. Wireless video surveillance and data transmission are also its mainstream applications.
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