5G roadblock: labor

Tue Dec 31 00:19:06 UTC 2019

On 12/30/19 6:31 PM, Ca By wrote:
> is is still a physics thing. Most purest will says 5G = new radio (NR). NR can run in any band. And, the distance is a function of the band. Tmobile is big on 600mhz NR, Sprint is big on 2500mhz NR and VZW has 28ghz NR. 

Is/are there defined standard(s) for this NR?  I was of the impression that we were basically just tweaking the LTE-A MAC and OFDM[A] PHY for wider bandwidth (mid-band and mmwave) or newly available low-band (600MHz) spectrum deployments.  AFAIK, there's no new PHY tricks going on for "5G" that aren't already being used for "4G" LTE-A deployments on existing mainstream spectrum.  Aside from the new bands, what's the burden on the handset vs. base?  A lot of tricks (beamforming, multi-site MIMO, etc.) can be done without real changes to the handset, and we can thankfully mostly upgrade the OFDM PHY to support e.g. denser modulation constellations in a somewhat incremental manner.

I already see lots of outdoor small cells on fiber in dense retail, academic, business, etc. areas even in suburbs.  I assume they're quite common in urban areas, though I don't get to do much work in those environments.  Deployment of these started well before any 5G hype I was aware of even on the network operator side (think 6+ years ago).

All that is to say, what's the magic secret sauce that makes "5G" any real different from "modern 4G"?  I really don't want to go diving down the 3GPP document hole...
-- 
Brandon Martin