Even a quick look at 5G spectrum globally will make a couple of things clear: most of the new spectrum--by amount of capacity--is in the millimeter wave regions (30 GHz to 300 GHz. Most of the available “coverage” capacity is in the 600-MHz and the 3.5 GHz regions.
As always, there is an inverse relationship between frequency and capacity: lower frequencies propagate further, and are better for coverage; higher frequencies have more capacity, but propagate less far, and so are better for capacity needs.
It is equally clear that even with extensive spectrum refarming from 2G and 3G, plus spectrum sharing and small cell architectures, most of the future new capacity will have to come from the millimeter wave regions.
Even with robust spectrum refarming, small cell architectures and spectrum sharing, most of the “capacity” will lie in the millimeter wave regions. With no end in sight to mobile data demand, it already is clear that even full spectrum refarming of all 2G, 3G and 4G spectrum will not match expected demand.
In the United Kingdom and virtually all other global markets, total mobile spectrum in the pre-millimeter-save era has been less than 1 GHz. Compared to that, potential usable millimeter wave spectrum could reach 100 GHz. That is two orders of magnitude more spectrum, not including spectrum sharing, spectrum aggregation, small cell architectures and use of unlicensed spectrum.
The bottom line is that millimeter wave spectrum is where capacity will come from in 5G and all future mobile generations.
No comments:
Post a Comment