{"id":27906,"date":"2018-11-18T15:04:12","date_gmt":"2018-11-18T20:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wadesarver.com\/Podcast\/?p=27906"},"modified":"2018-11-18T15:53:35","modified_gmt":"2018-11-18T20:53:35","slug":"will-5g-nr-and-lte-work-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wadesarver.com\/Podcast\/2018\/11\/will-5g-nr-and-lte-work-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Will 5G NR and LTE work together?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"COP<\/a><\/h1>\n

The answer, of course, is yes to this stupid question. Why did I ask this? Well, I was reading an article by Ericsson about the advantages of having 5G NR and LTE working together, what a novel idea, like who has a choice in this?<\/p>\n

\"Tower<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Article found here, https:\/\/www.ericsson.com\/en\/ericsson-technology-review\/archive\/2018\/the-advantages-of-combining-5g-nr-with-lte?utm_source=LinkedIn&utm_medium=social_organic&utm_campaign=TeamEricsson&utm_content=38ae46f4-4fb4-4bd6-872b-a0694d61648e<\/a> if you want to glance at it. Or, download the PDF at https:\/\/www.ericsson.com\/assets\/local\/publications\/ericsson-technology-review\/docs\/2018\/etr-2018-09-5g-radiodeployment.pdf<\/a> if that\u2019s easier.<\/p>\n

OK, Ericsson, I am a fan of what you\u2019ve done this year. You\u2019ve done great things in 2018, turned your company around and added more and more jobs in the USA, (where I live). I love that<\/strong> because Nokia and Samsung have done all that they can to move more and more out of the USA. FYI \u2013 I am pro USA, sorry world, that\u2019s where I live, and I see so many people losing jobs in telecom. Oh, one more thing, it\u2019s the largest telecom market for revenue in the world, yet, all the OEMs want to offshore everything. I think its time for a disruptor!<\/p>\n

Now, back to the article. Here\u2019s the thing, WTF? That\u2019s like saying 3G and 4G are better together. Why do I think that is a stupid statement? Here\u2019s why. Any carrier in the USA will deploy them together anyway, and they probably have 3G out here as well. Not just Tier 1 carriers! Also, what about Wi-Fi, they rely on that to offload the carrier\u2019s network. Luckily, I actually read the article.<\/p>\n

The title is awful<\/em>. Not sure who would say such a silly thing or how it could be taken seriously with anyone working on LTE or 5G deployments. When you read the article, it\u2019s much better at explaining that they really are talking about spectrum, Massive MIMO, and planning. I don\u2019t know why they didn\u2019t call the article, \u201cHow to get the Most out of your 5G NR Deployments with LTE as the foundation\u201d. Seriously, it makes more sense.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Anyway, let me break it down for you. They cover how 5G spectrum will be either be 3.5GHz or mmwave. That is for everyone but T-Mobile and Sprint. They have other plans which they are executing now. While T-Mobile has fought for 3.5GHz spectrum, they also plan to roll out 5G in the 600MHz spectrum. Sprint is already rolling out massive MIMO in 2.5GHz with LTE. They have plenty of 2.5GHz spectrum to deploy 5G in the same spectrum. Meanwhile, AT&T is deploying 5G in both mmwave and other spectrums while Verizon will use 3.5GHz and mmwave. It\u2019s obvious that mmwave is the choice of FWA.<\/p>\n

For a list of products to support Wade4Wireless, click here!<\/a><\/h2>\n

Would you sign up for a membership site with private content? If so, email me at wade@techfecta.com<\/a> and write Membership.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The article talks about how MIMO will be a game changer. I am talking about massive MIMO which includes MU-MIMO and beamforming technologies. Who knew that when Ruckus used beamforming for Wi-Fi years ago that it would be a norm for carrier spectrum now?<\/p>\n

The article brings out the fact that LTE and 5G will have to work together. No shit Sherlock! This is true, but more out of necessity since hardly anyone is rolling out a 5G only system. If you say DISH is doing it, I\u2019ll believe it when I see it. They\u2019ve done little with their spectrum to date. Dish\u2019s history of wireless deployment is weak at best outside of TV delivery. All that money for spectrum and very little, if anything, to show for it. Although, they finally appear to be making progress in deploying something, supposedly a 5G IOT system. Again, I\u2019ll believe it when I see it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

Spectrum is key because 5G can do more if it has the bandwidth. Sprint has prime spectrum for 5G in their 2.5GHz band. They literally have 100MHz of spectrum in most of the USA. That\u2019s ideal for 5G. It should be a game changer that would allow them to use it for backhaul and\/or fronthaul.<\/p>\n

I believe that Verizon will also want to use the mmwave to supply backhaul to their small cells and CRAN sites and use it to deliver broadband to end users to create high-speed 5G hotspots. That\u2019s going to be awesome.<\/p>\n

Indoor use for mmwave should take off almost immediately, but there are health concerns. Everything I read says the spectrum is safe, but so many people are scared of it. The spectrum is the key.<\/p>\n

I bring up safety because that\u2019s a huge question in Quora, \u201cHow safe is 5G?\u201d and the point I try to get across is that it\u2019s not the technology but the spectrum and power that can hurt people. Oh, by the way, your microwave uses 2.4GHz, just like Wi-Fi in the ISM band. Wi-Fi can run in several spectrums, today most people use 5.8GHz, but 2.4GHz is still being used. What\u2019s the difference? Wi-Fi power is so low; it\u2019s not a safety concern whereas the high-powered Klystron is hammering 2.4GHz to through food and liquids! Power is the difference, and the FCC has strict limits that the carriers are supposed to follow when deploying on poles. Most small cells are very safe, but the CRAN radio heads could be a different story if not carefully monitored.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Anyway, I digress.<\/p>\n

The thing is that 5G will need new spectrum, duh! That spectrum should have enough bandwidth so that we see incredible improvements in throughput and latency. That\u2019s why 3.5GHz is nice, but mmwave is amazing because it has so much more bandwidth. If we can get mmwave spectrum with 100Mhz to 1Ghz carriers set aside for 5G, then imagine what you could do! A lot of broadband stuff! Interactive games, AI functions, near real-time functions and more. How cool would that be to have dedicated spectrum that should be more efficient than Wi-Fi? Yet, if we have dedicated Wi-Fi, it works really well. BUT, you\u2019re only as good as you backhaul, the carriers need to make sure that the backhaul can handle more than 1Gbps. Here is where I think Sprint might fall short. To raise all the backhauls to 100Gbps to handle the new loading costs a lot of money. It ain\u2019t free! And, the reoccurring OpEx will be more. So now you are adding monthly costs to your sites.<\/p>\n

How do we cover the increased backhaul costs? We need to load the sites with more and more subscribers! While we all loved densification like adding small cells everywhere. What we really want, at least what the carriers really want is to get as much money from one site as possible. This is why small cells never went into the 100,000s for deployment. They only could handle so many users. How did we overcome that issue? We deployed CRAN, a radio head that could handle all the loading of a macro site sector. That is a game changer. Now we can have very small cells in dense coverage areas that handle heavy user loading as well as high throughout.<\/p>\n

\"Get<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Now, many carriers will call CRAN deployments small cells. That\u2019s a ruse to get them deployed. A CRAN site requires a lot more fiber than a small cell, it is a bigger radio head and has more power and loading. Sorry, I\u2019m off topic again.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s sum this up, 5G and LTE will work great together; it has to. Massive MIMO is a great improvement. Spectrum matters, we need more to do more.<\/p>\n