R&S Webinar on LTE-A Pro and evolution to 5G

Rohde & Schwarz recently uploaded a webinar video on their YouTube channel. I found it really useful. It's embedded below.

Topics covered:

• LTE-M / NB-IoT
• feMTC
• UE Category M2
• OTDOA based positioning
• UE Categories
• Unlicensed Spectrum Overview
• LTE in Unlicensed Spectrum
• LWA, LWIP
• LAA, eLAA
• Wi-Fi
• LBT
• LWA mobility
• Carrier Aggregation Enhancements
• Multi-user superposition transmission (MUST)
• Single cell - point to multipoint transmission (SC-PTM)
• SC-PTM Channel Structure
• SC-PTM Channel Flow
• Massive MIMO
• V2X Overview
• eNB scheduling - transmission mode 3
• Distributed scheduling - transmission mode 4
• Direct communication
• LTE Advanced Pro (Release 15)
• Further NB-IoT Enhancements
• Even further enhanced MTC - eMTC4 (Rel-15)

Related Posts:

• LTE-Advanced Pro (a.k.a. 4.5G)
• New LTE UE Categories (Downlink & Uplink) in Release-13
• Mission Critical Services update from 3GPP - June 2017

Displaying 5G Network Status Icon on Smartphones and Other Devices

A more updated presentation & video on this topic is available on 3G4G '5G Training' page here.

Who thought displaying of network status icon on 5G devices would be so much fun. Typically the network icons are more of:
2G - Gsm, G, G+, E
3G - 3G, H, H+
4G - 4G, 4G+

Back in 2017, Samsung devices started displaying 4G+ icon. Samsung told mybroadband:

that by default its devices require a network to support Category 6 LTE, and for the total combined bandwidth to exceed 20MHz, before they will display the “4G+” icon.

Networks in South Africa frequently don’t have over 20MHz of aggregated bandwidth available, though.

As a result, one network asked Samsung to reduce the combined bandwidth requirement for the 4G+ icon to display to 15MHz, which Samsung approved.

“Samsung’s global policy regarding the display of the LTE/LTE-A/4G/4G+ network icon is that the network icon display is operator-configurable upon official request and Samsung approval,” it said.

The reason this is interesting is because LTE is really 3.9G but generally called 4G. LTE-A is supposed to be 4G because in theory it meets IMT-Advanced criteria. Then we have LTE-Advanced Pro, which is known as 4.5G. While in majority of the operators display 4.5G as 4G or 4G+, couple of operators has decided to become a bit innovative.

AT&T started by updating the network icons of some of their devices to 5GE, which is their way of saying 4.5G. E stands for Evolution. Or as some people joked, it stands for economy (or value) version, as opposed to premium version.

Better example would be that of Tesco Beef (I still remember) 🤣 pic.twitter.com/7yHNDpjDYs

— Zahid Ghadialy (@zahidtg) February 12, 2019

Brazilian operator Claro, decided to use the 4.5G icon but the 5 is much larger font compared to 4 (see the pic above). Some people call this as dishonest attempt by them.

I see a few people asking how can devices decide if they are on 4G or 4.5G. There is no standard procedure for this and is UE specific. One way is to look at RRC messages. If the system information messages contain optional IE's for 3GPP Release-13, then the network supports LTE-A Pro and if the device supports the features for LTE-A Pro, it can display 4.5G or 5GE, etc. Another approach is the optional IEs present in NAS Attach Accept message. As this comes slightly later in the registration process, the device displays 4G first and once the registration is complete, 4.5G. Note there is no requirement from standards point of  view about displaying of the network status indication icon up to 4G/4.5G.

To avoid such confusion in 5G, 3GPP submitted the first Liaison statement S2-175303. In this, 3GPP said:

With this number of System and Radio access options available, one or more new status icons are expected to appear on the User Interface of future (mobile) devices. A user should expect consistency across devices and networks as to what icons actually mean (i.e. what services might be expected when an icon is displayed).

While 3GPP specifications are not expected to define or discuss Service or RAT indicators in the User Interface themselves, 3GPP should provide the necessary tools in EPS and 5GS to enable them. It is therefore necessary to understand the conditions required for displaying these icons and with which granularity so we can identify what information ought to be available in/made available to the device.

SA2 understands that Status Icons related to 5G might be displayed for example on a UE display taking into account all or some combinations of these items (other items may exist):
- Access Restriction Data in subscription (with the potential exception of emergency access); 
- UE CN registration (i.e. is UE EPC- and/or 5GC-registered?);
- UE capabilities; 
- Network capabilities; 
- UE is camping on a cell of NG-RAN supporting NR only, E-UTRA only or, the ability to activate dual connectivity with another RAT (NR or E-UTRA);
- UE is camping on a cell of E-UTRAN (connected to EPC) with the ability to activate dual connectivity with NR as secondary cell;
- UE is in connected mode using NR, E-UTRA (in 5GS) or dual connectivity between E-UTRA and NR.

Given the above, SA2 would like to kindly ask for any feedback from GSMA FNW and NGMN on requirements and granularity for Service indicators and/or RAT indicators related to 5G.

GSMA responded in R2-1713952. 6 cases have been identified (see the first picture on top) :

The configurations consist of the following states and are as described in Table 1:

1. EPS NR NSA (EN-DC) capable UE attached to EPC and currently in IDLE state under or in RRC_connected state connected to E-UTRAN cell not supporting LTE-NR dual connectivity 
2. EPS NR NSA (EN-DC) capable UE attached to EPC and currently in IDLE state under or in RRC_Connected state connected to AND active on LTE for uplink and downlink on only E-UTRAN cell supporting LTE-NR dual connectivity and has not detected NR coverage (i.e. UE is not under NR coverage and/or not configured to make NR measurements)
3. EPS NR NSA (EN-DC) capable UE attached to EPC and currently in RRC_Connected state connected to E-UTRAN cell (supporting dual connectivity) and active on LTE for uplink and downlink only and has detected NR coverage (i.e. UE is under NR coverage and has been configured to make NR measurements) 
4. EPS NR NSA (EN-DC) capable UE attached to EPC and currently in IDLE state under E-UTRAN cell supporting LTE-NR dual connectivity and has detected NR coverage (i.e. UE is under NR coverage and has been configured to make NR measurements)
5. EPS NR NSA (EN-DC) capable UE attached to EPC and currently in RRC_Connected state connected to E-UTRAN cell (supporting dual connectivity) and active on LTE and NR for uplink and/or downlink
6. 5GS capable UE attached to 5GC and currently in IDLE state under or in RRC_Connected state connected to NG-RAN (eLTE (option 5 or 7) or NR (option 2 or 4) cell)

As there is no consensus on a single preferred configuration, it is desirable to make the display of 5G status icon in the UE configurable such that the display of 5G status icon can be made depending on operator preference. 

This proposal by GSMA was noted by 3GPP in R2-1803949.

RAN WG2 would like to inform GSMA and SA2 that, according to GSMA and SA2 recommendations (LSs R2-1713952 and S2-175270, respectively), RAN WG2 introduced 1 bit indication per PLMN called “upperLayerIndication” within LTE SIB 2. 

This bit enables the realization of the configurations based on UE states as per recommendation from GSMA (e.g. RRC_IDLE UE as for State 2 in LS R2-1713952 from GSMA)”. 

For idle mode UEs this is the only mechanism agreed. 

Actions: RAN WG2 would like to ask GSMA and SA2 to take the information above into account. 

Hopefully there will be less confusion when 5G is rolled out about the status icons. In the meantime we might see some more 4.5G icon innovations.

Gigabit LTE?

Last year Qualcomm announced the X16 LTE modem that was capable of up to 1Gbps, category 16 in DL and Cat 13 (150 Mbps) in UL. See my last post on UE categories here.

Early January, it announced Snapdragon 835 at CES that looks impressive. Android central says "On the connectivity side of things, there's the Snapdragon X16 LTE modem, which enables Category 16 LTE download speeds that go up to one gigabit per second. For uploads, there's a Category 13 modem that lets you upload at 150MB/sec. For Wi-Fi, Qualcomm is offering an integrated 2x2 802.11ac Wave-2 solution along with an 802.11ad multi-gigabit Wi-Fi module that tops out at 4.6Gb/sec. The 835 will consume up to 60% less power while on Wi-Fi."

Technology purists would know that LTE, which is widely referred to as 4G, was in fact pre-4G or as some preferred to call it, 3.9G. New UE categories were introduced in Rel-10 to make LTE into LTE-Advanced with top speeds of 3Gbps. This way, the ITU requirements for a technology to be considered 4G (IMT-Advanced) was satisfied.

LTE-A was already Gigabit capable in theory but in practice we had been seeing peak speeds of up to 600Mbps until recently. With this off my chest, lets look at what announcements are being made. Before that, you may want to revisit what 4.5G or LTE-Advanced Pro is here.

• Qualcomm, Telstra, Ericsson and NETGEAR Announce World’s First Gigabit Class LTE Mobile Device and Gigabit-Ready Network. Gigabit Class LTE download speeds are achieved through a combination of 3x carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO on two aggregated carriers plus 2x2 MIMO on the third carrier, and 256-QAM higher order modulation. 
• TIM in Italy is the first in Europe to launch 4.5G up to 500 Mbps in Rome, Palermo and Sanremo
• Telenet in partnership with ZTE have achieved a download speed of 1.3 Gbps during a demonstration of the ZTE 4.5G new technology. That's four times faster than 4G's maximum download speed. Telenet is the first in Europe to reach this speed in real-life circumstances. 4.5G ZTE technology uses 4x4 MIMO beaming, 3-carrier aggregation, and a QAM 256 modulation.
• AT&T said, "The continued deployment of our 4G LTE-Advanced network remains essential to laying the foundation for our evolution to 5G. In fact, we expect to begin reaching peak theoretical speeds of up to 1 Gbps at some cell sites in 2017. We will continue to densify our wireless network this year through the deployment of small cells and the use of technologies like carrier aggregation, which increases peak data speeds. We’re currently deploying three-way carrier aggregation in select areas, and plan to introduce four-way carrier aggregation as well as LTE-License Assisted Access (LAA) this year."
• T-Mobile USA nearly reached a Gigabit and here is what they say, "we reached nearly 1 Gbps (979 Mbps) on our LTE network in our lab thanks to a combination of three carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO and 256 QAM (and an un-released handset)."
• The other US operator Sprint expects to unveil some of its work with 256-QAM and massive MIMO on Sprint’s licensed spectrum that pushes the 1 gbps speed boundary. It’s unclear whether this will include an actual deployment of the technology

So we are going to see a lot of higher speed LTE this year and yes we can call it Gigabit LTE but lets not forget that the criteria for a technology to be real '4G' was that it should be able to do 1Gbps in both DL and UL. Sadly, the UL part is still not going Gigabit anytime soon.

EE's vision of Ultra-Reliable Emergency Network

Many of my readers would be aware that UK is probably the first country to have decided to move its emergency services network from an existing TETRA network to a commercial LTE network operated by EE.

While some people have hailed this as a very bold move in the right direction, there is no shortage of critics. Around 300,000 emergency services users will share the same infrastructure used by over 30 million general users.

The following is from an article in Wireless Magazine:

Steve Whatson, deputy director Delivery, Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP) – the organisation within the UK Home Office procuring ESN – assured delegates that ESN will match the existing dedicated Airwave emergency services communication network in terms of coverage for roads, outdoor hand portable devices and marine coverage. Air to ground (A2G) will extend its reach from 6,000ft to 12,000ft.

Whatson also pointed out that coverage is not one single piece, but will comprise a number of different elements, which all need to mesh into one seamless network run by the ESN Lot 3 Mobile Services (main 4G network) provider – EE.

This includes: EE’s main commercial 4G network; Extended Area Services (hard-to-reach areas of the UK where new passive sites are to be built under a separate contract and then equipped with EE base stations); air-to-ground; London Underground; Crossrail; marine coverage (to 12 nautical miles); and special coverage solutions.

EE is currently rolling out new 4G sites – it will eventually have some 19,500 sites – and is upgrading others with 800MHz spectrum, which propagates over longer distances and is better at penetrating buildings than its other 4G spectrum holdings. Crucially for ESN, it is also switching on a Voice over LTE (VoLTE) capability, starting with the UK’s main cities.
...
Mission critical networks must be always available and have levels of resilience far in excess of commercial networks. Speaking exclusively to Wireless in early May, Tom Bennett, group director Technology Services, Architecture & Devices at EE, said: ‘We already achieve a very high availability level, but what the Home Office was asking for effectively was about a 0.3% increase against our existing commercial availability levels.

‘Now for every 0.1% increase in availability there is a significant investment because you are at the extreme top end of the curve where it is harder and harder to make a noticeable difference.’

There are very specific requirements for coverage and availability of the ESN network for the UK road system. Bennett says: ‘Mobile is based on a probability of service. No more than 1% of any constabulary’s roads are allowed to be below 75% availability, and on major roads it is 96% availability. A coverage gap in this context is no more than 1km.’

The current Airwave network has approximately 4,000 sites, many with back-up generators on site with fuel for seven days of autonomous running if the main power is cut, along with a range of resilient backhaul solutions.

Bennett says that out of EE’s 18,500 sites it has about the same number of unique coverage sites (ie. no overlapping coverage) – around 4,000. ‘As part of our investment programme, those unique coverage sites will need a significant investment in the causes of unavailability – ie. resilient backhaul and back-up batteries.’

He explains that EE has undertaken a lot of analysis of what causes outages on its network, and it has combined that data with the Home Office’s data on where the natural disasters in the UK have occurred over the past 10 years.

From this, EE is able to make a reasonable assessment of which sites are likely to be out of action due to flooding or other disasters for more than three or four days. ‘For those sites – and it is less than 4,000 – you need generators too, because you may not be able to physically access the sites for some days,’ says Bennett.

For obvious reasons, the unique coverage sites are mostly in rural areas. But as Bennett points out, the majority of cases where the emergency services are involved is where people are – suburban and urban areas.

‘In these areas EE has overlapping coverage from multiple sites to meet the capacity requirements, so if a site goes down, in the majority of cases we have compensation coverage. A device can often see up to five tower sites in London, for example,’ he says.

Having adequate backhaul capacity – and resilient backhaul at that – is vital in any network. Bennett says EE is installing extra backhaul, largely microwave and fibre, but other solutions will also be used including satellite and LTE relay from base station to base station – daisy chaining. On 9 May 2016, EE announced a deal with satellite provider Avanti to provide satellite backhaul in some areas of the UK.

Additional coverage and resilience will be offered by RRVs (rapid response vehicles), which EE already has in its commercial network today, for example, to provide extra capacity in Ascot during the racing season.

‘We would use similar, although not exactly the same technology for disaster recovery and site/service recovery, but with all the backhaul solutions,’ says Bennett. ‘Let’s say we planned some maintenance or upgrade work that involved taking the base station out for a while.

‘We’d talk to the chief inspector before the work commences. If he says, there’s no chance of doing that tonight, we can put the RRV there, and provided we maintain coverage, we can carry out the work. RRVs are a very good tool for doing a lot of things.’

At the British APCO event, Mansoor Hanif, director of Radio Access Networks at EE said it was looking at the possibility of using ‘airmasts’ to provide additional coverage. Meshed small cells, network in a box and repeater solutions are becoming available for these ‘airmasts’, which will provide coverage from balloons, or UAVs – tethered drones with power cables and optical fibre connected to them.

Mansoor Hanif, Director of RAN at EE gave a presentation on this at Critical Communications World 2016 and has also given an interview. Both are embedded below.

Ultra-Reliable Networks – A Mobile Operator Perspective from 3G4G

Feel free to let me know if you believe this will work or not and why.

4G / LTE by stealth

In the good old days when people used to have 2G phones, they were expensive but all people cared about is Voice & SMS.

The initial 3G phones were bulky/heavy with small battery life, not many apps and expensive. There was not much temptation to go and buy one of these, unless it was heavily subsidised by someone. Naturally it took a while before 3G adoption became common. In the meantime, people had to go out of their way to get a 3G phone.

With 4G, it was a different story. Once LTE was ready, the high end phones started adding 4G in their phones by default. What it meant was that if the operator enabled them to use 4G, these devices started using 4G rather than 3G. Other lower end devices soon followed suit. Nowadays, unless you are looking for a real cheap smartphone, your device will have basic LTE support, maybe not advanced featured like carrier aggregation.

The tweets below do not surprise me at all:

Another data point for Turkey #4.5G: There were 5 million new LTE subscriber additions on the first *day* of launch. (no 4G before)

— Dimitris Mavrakis (@dmavrakis) May 10, 2016

With Huawei in Istanbul for a 4.5G event. Apparently there are 40 million 4G subscribers 1 month after LTE launch (by all 3 MNOs).

— Dimitris Mavrakis (@dmavrakis) May 10, 2016

This is what I refer to as 4G or LTE by stealth.

Occasionally people show charts like these (just using this as a reference but not pin pointing anyone) to justify the 5G growth trajectory with 4G in mind. It will all depend on what 5G will mean, how the devices look like, what data models are on offer, what the device prices are like, etc.

I think its just too early to predict if there will be a 5G by stealth.

5G Spectrum Discussions

While most people are looking at 5G from the point of new technologies, innovative use cases and even lumping everything under sun as part of 5G, many are unaware of the importance of spectrum and the recently concluded ITU World Radio Conference 2015 (WRC-15).

As can be seen in the picture above, quite a few bands above 24GHz were identified for 5G. Some of these bands have an already existing allocation for mobile service on primary basis. What this means is that mobile services can be deployed in these bands. For 3G and 4G, the spectrum used was in bands below 4GHz, with 1800MHz being the most popular band. Hence there was never a worry for those high frequency bands being used for mobile communication.

As these bands have now been selected for study by ITU, 5G in these bands cannot be deployed until after WRC-19, where the results of these studies will be presented. There is a small problem though. Some of the bands that were initially proposed for 5G, are not included in this list of bands to be studied. This means that there is a possibility that some of the proponent countries can go ahead and deploy 5G in those bands.

For three bands that do not already have mobile services as primary allocation, additional effort will be required to have mobile as primary allocation for them. This is assuming that no problems are identified as a result of studies going to be conducted for feasibility of these bands for 5G.

To see real benefits of 5G, an operator would need to use a combination of low and high frequency bands as can be seen in the picture above. Low frequencies for coverage and high frequencies for capacity and higher data rates.


As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, 5G will be coming in two phases. Phase 1 will be Rel-15 in H2, 2018 and Phase 2, Rel-16, in Dec. 2019. Phase 1 of 5G will generally consist of deployment in lower frequency bands as the higher frequency bands will probably get an approval after WRC-19. Once these new bands have been cleared for 5G deployment, Phase 2 of 5G would be ready for deployment of these high frequency bands.

This also brings us to the point that 5G phase 1 wont be significantly different from LTE-A Pro (or 4.5G). It may be slightly faster and maybe a little bit more efficient.

One thing I suspect that will happen is start of switching off of 3G networks. The most commonly used 3G (UMTS) frequency is 2100MHz (or 2.1GHz). If a network has to keep some 3G network running, it will generally be this frequency. This will also allow other international users to roam onto that network. All other 3G frequencies would soon start migrating to 4G or maybe even 5G phase 1.

Anyway, 2 interesting presentations on 5G access and Future of mmWave spectrum are embedded below. They are both available to download from the UK Spectrum Policy Forum (SPF) notes page here.

Further reading:

• WRC-2015 and the impossible task of achieving a delicate balance

LTE-Advanced Pro (a.k.a. 4.5G)

3GPP announced back in October that the next evolution of the 3GPP LTE standards will be known as LTE-Advanced Pro. I am sure this will be shortened to LTE-AP in presentations and discussions but should not be confused with access points.

3GPP Approves LTE-Advanced Pro as New Marker for LTE Evolution System (4.5G) - https://t.co/J3H7lhqAeZ pic.twitter.com/rQmAeooQqd

— Zahid Ghadialy (@zahidtg) October 28, 2015

The 3GPP press release mentioned the following:

LTE-Advanced Pro will allow mobile standards users to associate various new features – from the Release’s freeze in March 2016 – with a distinctive marker that evolves the LTE and LTE-Advanced technology series.

The new term is intended to mark the point in time where the LTE platform has been dramatically enhanced to address new markets as well as adding functionality to improve efficiency.

The major advances achieved with the completion of Release 13 include: MTC enhancements, public safety features – such as D2D and ProSe - small cell dual-connectivity and architecture, carrier aggregation enhancements, interworking with Wi-Fi, licensed assisted access (at 5 GHz), 3D/FD-MIMO, indoor positioning, single cell-point to multi-point and work on latency reduction. Many of these features were started in previous Releases, but will become mature in Release 13.

LTE-evolution timelinea 350pxAs well as sign-posting the achievements to date, the introduction of this new marker confirms the need for LTE enhancements to continue along their distinctive development track, in parallel to the future proposals for the 5G era.

Some vendors have been exploring ways of differentiating the advanced features of Release-13 and have been using the term 4.5G. While 3GPP does not officially support 4.5G (or even 4G) terminology, a new term has been welcomed by operators and vendors alike.

I blogged about Release-13 before, here, which includes a 3GPP presentation and 4G Americas whitepaper. Recently Nokia (Networks) released a short and sweet video and a whitepaper. Both are embedded below:

The Nokia whitepaper (table of contents below) can be downloaded from here.

'The Future Inter-connected Network' and Timing, Frequency & Phase requirements

I had the pleasure of doing a keynote at PhaseReady 2015 in London today. My presentation is embedded below along with some comments, followed by tweets some of which I think are important to think about. Finally, I have embedded a video by EE and Light Reading which was quoted and maybe its important in the context of this event.

The Future Inter-connected Network from Zahid Ghadialy

My main focus during this presentation has been on how the networks have evolved from 3G days with the main focus (unconsciously) on speeds. While the networks are evolving, they are also getting more complex. The future ecosystem will consist of many Inter-connected (and in many cases inter-operable) networks that will work out the requirements in different situations and adapt to the necessary network(technology) accordingly.

An example of today's networks are like driving a manual car where we have to change gears depending on the traffic, speed required and fuel efficiency. Automatic cars are supposed to optimise this and achieve the best in all different cases. The future inter-connected networks should achieve the best based on the requirements in all different scenarios.

While it is easy to say this in theory, the practical networks will have many challenges to solve, including business and/or technical. The theme of the conference was timing, frequency and phase synchronisation. There are already challenges around them today, with the advanced LTE-A features. These challenges are only going to get bigger.

The following are the tweets from the day:

Finally, here is the link to video referred to in the last tweet. Its from last year but well worth listening.

The path from 4.5G to 5G

In the WiFi Global Congress last week, I heard this interesting talk from an ex-colleague who now works with Huawei. While there were a few interesting things, the one I want to highlight is 4.5G. The readers of this blog will remember that I introduced 4.5G back in June last year and followed it with another post in October when everyone else started using that term and making it complicated.

According to this presentation, 3GPP is looking to create a new brand from Release-13 that will supersede LTE-Advanced (LTE-A). Some of you may remember that the vendor/operator community tried this in the past by introducing LTE-B, LTE-C, etc. for the upcoming releases but they were slapped down by 3GPP. Huawei is calling this Release-13 as 4.5G but it would be re-branded based on what 3GPP comes up with.

Another interesting point are the data rates achieved in the labs, probably more than others. 10.32Gbps in sub-6GHz in a 200MHz bandwidth and 115.20Gbps using a 9.6GHz bandwidth in above 6GHz spectrum. The complete presentation as follows:

Huawei: Paving the Way to 5G from Zahid Ghadialy

Another Huawei presentation that merits inclusion is the one from the last Cambridge Wireless Small Cells SIG event back in February by Egon Schulz. The presentation is embedded below but I want to highlight the different waveforms that being being looked at for 5G. In fact if someone has a list of the waveforms, please feel free to add it in comments

Research challenges in #5G #IEEE #Bangalore #5GTechnologyWorkshop pic.twitter.com/CQhwGfVb8T

— Amod Anandkumar (@amodjaiga) May 22, 2015

The above tweet from a recent IEEE event in Bangalore is another example of showing the research challenges in 5G, including the waveforms. The ones that I can obviously see from above is: FBMC, UFMC, GFDM, NOMA, SCMA, OFDM-opt, f-OFDM.

The presentation as follows:

Huawei: Forward 2020 -> 5G from Zahid Ghadialy

5G: A 2020 Vision

I had the pleasure of speaking at the CW (Cambridge Wireless) event ‘5G: A Practical Approach’. It was a very interesting event with great speakers. Over the next few weeks, I will hopefully add the presentations from some of the other speakers too.

In fact before the presentation (below), I had a few discussions over the twitter to validate if people agree with my assumptions. For those who use twitter, maybe you may want to have a look at some of these below:

5G is coming, maybe much earlier than you expect it to. There is a race to be first. Come... http://t.co/BQUR5p3bpk pic.twitter.com/z3cOD7Xv2O
— eXplanoTech (@eXplanoTech) January 30, 2015

@disruptivedean @ericsson Re 2% only cellular, I was discussing this the other day. Too many competing techs. pic.twitter.com/Z7s6wqxkBM
— Zahid Ghadialy (@zahidtg) January 26, 2015

Spectrum Bands Summary - Can anyone point me to a better picture? (Cc @open_spectrum @StevenJCrowley @elenaneira) pic.twitter.com/IkBhtQubSj
— Zahid Ghadialy (@zahidtg) January 19, 2015

Anyway, here is the presentation.

 

5G: A 2020 Vision from eXplanoTech

What is (pre-5G) 4.5G?

Before we look at what 4.5G is, lets look at what is not 4.5G. First and foremost, Carrier Aggregation is not 4.5G. Its the foundation for real 4G. I keep on showing this picture on Twitter

I am sure some people much be really bored by this picture of mine that I keep showing. LTE, rightly referred to as 3.9G or pre-4G by the South Korean and Japanese operators was the foundation of 'Real' 4G, a.k.a. LTE-Advanced. So who has been referring to LTE-A as 4.5G (and even 5G). Here you go:

Got 4G? Wake up, grandad. We're doing 4.5G LTE-A in London - EE chief: And get a load of our gleaming voice system! … http://t.co/78HSHlyPuA
— The Register (@TheRegister) March 5, 2014

Voda UK PR says: "The new technology, called Carrier Aggregation but also referred to as LTE Advanced or 4.5G" 4.5G?
— Keith Dyer (@keithdyer) October 15, 2014

5G wireless technology LTE-Advanced is now running in the Philippines' largest and strongest network. | http://t.co/g8u3lJ8sLV #Smart5G
— Smart Communications (@SMARTCares) August 14, 2014

So lets look at what 4.5G is.

Back in June, we published a whitepaper where we referred to 4.5G as LTE and WiFi working together. When we refer to LTE, it refers to LTE-A as well. The standards in Release-12 allow simultaneous use of LTE(-A) and WiFi with selected streams on WiFi and others on cellular.

Some people dont realise how much spectrum is available as part of 5GHz, hopefully the above picture will give an idea. This is exactly what has tempted the cellular community to come up with LTE-U (a.k.a LA-LTE, LAA)

In a recent event in London called 5G Huddle, Alcatel-Lucent presented their views on what 4.5G would mean. If you look at the slide above, it is quite a detailed view of what this intermediate step before 5G would be. Some tweets related to this discussion from 5G Huddle as follows:

Good points: 4.5G as necessary step: CA, VoLTE & WebRTC, CoMP & coordination, NFV & cloud. But that can do everything we need #5GHuddle
— Real Wireless (@real_wireless) September 23, 2014

So 5G will be evolution of 4.5G using DC & CA - but much better signalling, more energy efficient as new air interface for IoT
— Real Wireless (@real_wireless) September 23, 2014

Finally, in a recent GSMA event, Huawei used the term 4.5G to set out their vision and also propose a time-frame as follows:

While in Alcatel-Lucent slide, I could visualise 4.5G as our vision of LTE(-A) + WiFi + some more stuff, I am finding it difficult to visualise all the changes being proposed by Huawei. How are we going to see the peak rate of 10Gbps for example?

I have to mention that I have had companies that have told me that their vision of 5G is M2M and D2D so Huawei is is not very far from reality here.

We should keep in mind that this 4G, 4.5G and 5G are the terms we use to make the end users aware of what new cellular technology could do for them. Most of these people understand simple terms like speeds and latency. We may want to be careful what we tell them as we do not want to make things confusing, complicated and make false promises and not deliver on them.

xoxoxo Added on 2nd January 2015 oxoxox

Chinese vendor ZTE has said it plans to launch a ‘pre-5G’ testing base station in 2015, commercial use of which will be possible in 2016, following tests and adjustment. Here is what they think pre-5G means:

Cell capacity and Opportunistic Use of Unlicensed and Shared Spectrum

One very interesting presentation from the LTE World Summit was about Improving the cell capacity by using unlicensed and shared spectrum opportunistically. Kamran Etemad is a senior advisor to FCC & UCMP and even though he was presenting this in his personal capacity, it reflected some interesting views that are quite prevalent in the USA.

If you don't know about Dynamic Spectrum Access Schemes, I wrote a post on the Small Cells blog here. The slide above is quite interesting as it shows the possibility of a 'Generalized' Carrier Aggregation in 3GPP Release-13. Personally, we believe that LTE + WiFi working together will be far more successful than LTE + LTE-U (unlicensed). As the blog readers would be aware, we have been pushing our vision of LTE + Wi-Fi working together; which we are calling as 4.5G. In case if you have not seen, our whitepaper is here.

The presentation is embedded below for reference:

Improving Cell Capacity of 5G Systems Through Opportunistic Use of Unlicensed and Shared Spectrum from Zahid Ghadialy

4.5G: Integration of LTE and Wi-Fi networks

With LTE-A getting ready to meet the IMT-Advanced requirements and fulfilling the role of promised '4G', we believe the next phase of evolution before 5G will be successful interworking of LTE and Wi-Fi networks.

This whitepaper (embedded below) explores this feature, we call 4.5G, in detail.



We are very thankful to Anritsu for kindly sponsoring this whitepaper. They have their own whitepaper on this topic which is also worth a read, available here.

4.5G: Integration of LTE and Wi-Fi networks from eXplanoTech

Let us know what you think about this.