5G stakeholders say the slow progress on spectrum allocation is preventing them from committing resources to mmWave research.

Iain Morris, International Editor

September 15, 2015

5 Min Read
Spectrum Uncertainty Hinders 5G Research

The lack of clarity about the spectrum that operators will be able to use with a key 5G technology appears to be impeding research efforts, judging by comments made by the director of the UK's 5G Innovation Center (5GIC), which had its official opening at the University of Surrey earlier today.

Professor Rahim Tafazolli said that industry groups and telecom players cannot invest heavily in research into "millimeter wave" radio technology until the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has made a decision on which spectrum bands will be set aside for it.

That is not expected to happen until the next World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) in 2019, when regulators and industry representatives will review the use of radio spectrum globally.

Figure 1: The 5GIC at the University of Surrey

"We do have some activities in this area and are finishing channel measurements, but you do not want to invest a lot of resources in different bands, and it would be good to know what to focus on," he told reporters gathered for the opening of the 5GIC.

"It looks as though the candidate bands will be between 40GHz and 60GHz and we will mobilize resources when we have more certainty," Tafazolli added. "The majority of our work now is applicable to frequencies below 6GHz."

Want to know more about 5G? Check out our 5G content channel here on Light Reading.

One of several technologies that fall under the 5G umbrella, millimeter wave -- or mmWave as it's sometimes known -- relies on spectrum in much higher bands than operators use with today's crop of mobile services. That means it can support wider channels and higher bit rates than other technologies, making it especially suitable for bandwidth-hungry applications like Ultra HD streaming. (See SK Telecom, Vendors Big Up Millimeter Wave for 5G.) and Helping Millimeter Wave Achieve Its Potential.)

But spectrum uncertainties mean that initial deployments of 5G are widely expected to focus on sub-6GHz bands. "We'll probably have two major releases of 5G -- the first in sub-6GHz and then another in higher spectrum bands at a slightly later date," said Professor Andy Sutton, the principal network architect for mobile operator EE , at the 5GIC event.

Like others in the industry, Tafazolli believes the first version of 5G will be deployed in 2020 before millimeter bands come into use a few years later.

"A best 'guestimate' at this stage is that it could be 2025 before millimeter wave is commercially launched as part of 5G," says Gabriel Brown, a senior analyst with Heavy Reading.

Asian technology giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Korea: SEC), which is also involved with the 5GIC, appears to share the concerns about mmWave spectrum. "There are issues with frequency allocation," said a UK-based spokesperson for the company. "[UK regulatory body] Ofcom is working on this but we are still a long way off identifying the frequency band that 5G will use."

That has not, however, prevented Samsung from carrying out some research into mmWave at its facilities in South Korea. The company now intends to share its channel measurement results with the 5GIC "to make sure our work around 30GHz is reflected in future work here," in the words of Samsung's spokesperson.

"Hopefully we can bring some products into the live testbed in Surrey," he said.

Next page: 5G testbed

5G testbed
Billed by Tafazolli as the first research institute in the world to focus resources on 5G technology, the 5GIC has now attracted more than £70 million ($108 million) in investment, including £12 million ($18 million) from the public sector, and currently houses some 170 researchers. (See 5G: Meet the Influencers.)

Its industry partners include all of the UK's major network operators as well as a number of leading technology players, including China's Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Japan's Fujitsu Ltd. (Tokyo: 6702; London: FUJ; OTC: FJTSY), besides Samsung.

The "testbed" to which Samsung refers is a 4G network that extends across the University of Surrey campus. The plan is to upgrade this system to include various 5G technologies as and when they are being developed. By 2018, the 5GIC reckons the testbed will be capable of supporting connection speeds of around 10 Gbit/s per cell.

Figure 2: Part of the campus-wide 5G testbed

Reporters attending the opening of the 5GIC were treated to a demonstration of Ultra HD video streaming over an "enhanced" outdoor mobile network, courtesy of Huawei and the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) , another 5GIC partner.

Huawei also gave a demonstration of a new air interface it calls Sparse Coding Multiple Access (SCMA), which it claims can support at least three times as many Internet of Things (IoT) devices as 4G.

Speaking to Light Reading on the sidelines of the 5GIC event, Wen Tong, the vice president of Huawei Canada's R&D Center, said it might take local regulators two or three years to free up spectrum bands for mmWave technologies following a ruling at the WRC in 2019. "There is a lot of work to do to bring the solution to the mass market," he said.

Nevertheless, Tong was keen to point out that mmWave is only one component of 5G and that other technologies would be used to provide a "ubiquitous cellular network."

Huawei has been working on a 5G air interface called Filtered OFDM that will be "frequency-band agnostic," according to Tong, and compatible with the SCMA standard it is pitching as an IoT technology. (See Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei Pitch 5G Radio Technologies and 5G: Generation Gap.)

Rival vendor Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) is backing an alternative air interface it calls Universal Filter OFDM.

— Iain Morris, Circle me on Google+ Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, News Editor, Light Reading

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About the Author(s)

Iain Morris

International Editor, Light Reading

Iain Morris joined Light Reading as News Editor at the start of 2015 -- and we mean, right at the start. His friends and family were still singing Auld Lang Syne as Iain started sourcing New Year's Eve UK mobile network congestion statistics. Prior to boosting Light Reading's UK-based editorial team numbers (he is based in London, south of the river), Iain was a successful freelance writer and editor who had been covering the telecoms sector for the past 15 years. His work has appeared in publications including The Economist (classy!) and The Observer, besides a variety of trade and business journals. He was previously the lead telecoms analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, and before that worked as a features editor at Telecommunications magazine. Iain started out in telecoms as an editor at consulting and market-research company Analysys (now Analysys Mason).

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