Spectrum Aggregation — 7.5 Gigabits Per Second? You Must Be Kidding
Evan Kirstel B2B TechFluencer
Create??Publish???Amplify?? TechInfluencer, Analyst, Content Creator w/600K Social Media followers, Deep Expertise in Enterprise ?? Cloud ??5G ??AI ??Telecom ?? CX ?? Cyber ?? DigitalHealth. TwitterX @evankirstel
by Evan Kirstel (Linkedin) & @evankirstel (Twitter)
On February 25, Qualcomm held a fascinating press conference called “What’s Next for 5G.” There were a number of exciting announcements, including partnerships with industry leaders such as Microsoft, Rakuten, and Samsung. In terms of topics, of particular interest was the idea of spectrum aggregation using the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor system, which will bridge mm-Wave, mid-band and 4G low-band frequencies. It is hard to get your head around how this happens, but it involves combining, blending, and folding all these frequencies together, creating the possibilities for higher bandwidth speeds.
As Qualcomm puts it, the Snapdragon X55 system offers "native support for 5G mmWave and sub-6 GHz, FDD and TDD, standalone and non-standalone, and 5G/4G spectrum sharing.” This will “allow operators to flexibly maximize spectrum assets to deliver the best possible experience and the Snapdragon X55 5G modem-RF System can provide a near-instant connection between the user and the cloud providing up to 7.5 Gbps speed." It is beyond my imagination to think of how I would use all that bandwidth, but when it comes, I’ll wonder how I lived without it.
Here are some of the other features of Snapdragon X55, according to Qualcomm:
- Integrated 5G to 2G multi-mode support
- Supports virtually any available spectrum band, mode or combination
- 5G/4G spectrum sharing
- Enhanced network capacity with full-dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO) support
- Multi-antenna mmWave beamforming architecture support
Each of these features is worth an in-depth analysis. However, for this article, I would like to focus on beamforming antenna technology. Beamforming is used to increase throughput with a user-specific RF antenna. It employs a signal processing technique with a grid of fixed beams, each with a dedicated scrambling code. See figure below.
Beamforming uses Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) RF antennas to increase spatial area for the receiver to capture a usable signal called Degrees of Freedom (DoF). A DoF is a Line of Sight (LoS) where there is no gain as a result of spatial multiplexing.
DoF is increased by separating the spacing of the antennas, which enhances far-field performance. Far-field, or Rayleigh distance (where the signal level varies inversely to the square of the frequency wavelength), is the region where the radiation pattern is independent of distance from the transmitting antenna. MIMO antennas can achieve other types of array gain, including Co-channel Interference Rejection (CCIR), a type of rejection of adjacent frequency signals.
Co-channel/cochannel Interference (CCI) may come from nearby Access Points (AP) or frequency harmonics from other high-power RF sources. CCI is a limiting factor in network design because the wireless system capacity (throughput) is the number of cells multiplied by the cell processing speed divided by the CCI.
Without going into further detail at this time, advanced antenna technologies coupled with spectrum aggregation will continue to accelerate wireless bandwidth speeds.
Summary: To keep this to one minute, I will conclude with the idea that a new approach to spectrum aggregation is important as our ideas of what constitutes an industry change. In future articles, I will explore new ways that Qualcomm is providing innovative solutions via 5G. You can read more about these technologies in their blog here.
References:
https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon-x55-5g-modem
https://www.threadgroup.org/What-is-Thread
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2020/02/04/thread-low-power-mesh-network-protocol-iot
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2020/02/04/5gai-ingredients-fueling-tomorrows-tech-innovations