One Promise of 5G: Everyday Millimeter Waves - What this Means for Standards and Measurements

5G appears to be upon us. In June the 3GPP has announced the completion of the Release-15 standard in June—the first drop of which was announced last December. Multiple mobile operators around the world have announced commercialization timing and the industry is struggling to address the mix of hype, new technology, and very aggressive schedules. Release-15 includes radio capabilities in the sub 6GHz range (FR1) as well as for millimeter-wave frequencies from 24-52GHz (FR2). The addition of the millimeter-wave spectrum to commercial wireless has pulled a new and wider audience into the arena of managing highly-directional radio propagation. And the 5G commercial wireless industry will have scale, cadence, and cost pressures that the aerospace & defense and satellite industries have yet to confront. These new cost and time-pressures impact designs, materials and lifecycles—and, of course, putting a quantitative measure on their performance and functionality is no small part of that impact. Test and measurement of these systems means using heretofore expensive equipment, time-consuming procedures, over-the-air techniques, and new end-to-end validation processes based on an unprecedented mobile use-model. The newness of FR2 means that the standard still has ways to go. The list of exceptions in Rel-15 and the number of items deferred to Rel-16 is a good indicator of what is yet to be done. And as of July, 2018, 3GPP RAN4 and RAN5 are still engaged in discussions (and not yet decisions) about over-the-air test methods (and their dramatic impact on measurement uncertainty) for such mundane measurements as power, spurious emissions, spectral emissions (SEM), and error-vector magnitude (EVM); and much work is still to be done for receiver measurements. This talk will cover the status of the 3GPP NR spec and some of its impacts on hardware and system design. It will also cover some examples of the tough measurement challenges confronting the industry as well as what to expect as the standard and the industry evolve.

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