5G


5G PR 2019 By Mike Hockett, Editor-in-Chief


Advertising from today’s cellular service providers would under-


standably make the common layperson assume communication technology is now in the age of 5G—that it’s here and being rolled out to the masses. But ask any electronic test & measurement en- gineer about the state of 5G, and they’ll likely tell you that we’re still almost a year from seeing widespread 5G adop- tion in various industries. As we enter the final year of this de-


cade, we at Evaluation Engineering wanted to get input from T&M vendors on what they see as where 5G is now in its development, and what develop- ments they expect to see throughout 2019. Here, Analog Devices director of wireless technology Tom Cameron and OnScale CEO Ian Campbell weigh in on a number of 5G topics.


Campbell: The 5G Hype—Address- ing the disconnect be- tween 5G network avail- ability and devices that


must be created to exist on the network: The Big Network giants of the world— AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone—are advertising their latest 5G trial results and although some results are impressive, you may get the impression that 5G is already here, or at the very least, right around the corner. On the other hand, if you talk to your aver- age mobile RF Front-End (RFFE) engineer,


22 EVALUATION ENGINEERING JANUARY 2019


he or she might tell you that true mobile applications of 5G technology are still a few years away. Te discrepancy lies in the disconnect


between 5G network availability and the devices that must be created to exist on that network. Te Big Network providers are racing to replace an entire wireless infrastructure, an immense challenge in itself. And while they fiercely compete to build the backbone needed to support 5G, another major piece of the puzzle is engineering mobile devices that are 5G compatible and can live on the new net- work. Te major caveat to these 5G trials are that the cell companies are using 5G base stations to transmit data to bulky 5G routers, not 5G smartphones or other mobile devices. Until we can miniaturize RF front-end (RFE) components so that we can squeeze bulky form factors into a shiny new 7 mm thick iPhone and cre- ate a day-to-day usage scenario, 5G will continue to remain more of a marketing hype than a reality. Where engineers are now with opti-


mizing/miniaturizing the performance of the components that go into 5G devic- es and what they need to overcome this challenge: Engineers will be working non- stop over the coming months and years to make 5G mobile devices a reality. Tey will be perfecting each component along the RFFE signal chain, which includes anten- na arrays, beamforming algorithms, filters, switches, power amps, and more.


A key challenge that engineers face


developing 5G mobile devices, like smart- phones, is miniaturizing and optimizing the performance of the radio frequency front end. Te RF front-end module con- sists of filters, amplifiers, and switches to manage gigahertz RF signals. Filters for 5G bands are especially challenging to op- timize and in a 5G smartphone, there will be dozens of these tiny filters. For context, the miniaturization of filters was largely responsible for the leaps from 1G to 2G, 2G to 3G, and 3G to 4G. New filter tech- nologies like SAW and FBAR made these leaps possible, and we’ll need another step-change in filter technology to en- able 5G bands up to 6 GHz, and an even larger jump to get to the fabled mmWave bands—double-digit GHz bands that will enable literally billions more devices to share 5G networks, with billions more bits per second to each device.


Cameron: In 2019, there will be re- alistic, tangible 5G activ- ity. 2019 will be the year when we see the first


commercial networks turning on and first handsets arriving in the market. Like pre- vious generations, 5G will have low initial penetration but will accelerate in com- ing years as technology matures and user devices emerge. Like 4G, it will take sev- eral years from initial launch until 5G is the dominant technology globally. Based on


REDICTIONS


iStock.com/ jamesteohart


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32