Wednesday, June 16, 2021

U.S. 5G Mid-Band Spectrum Required Both Sharing and Reallocation

All engineering and communications network design involves trade offs. That can be seen clearly in the properties and value of 5G spectrum of various types. Low-band is best for coverage, indoors and outside, but does not supply capacity so sell. 


Mid-band provides a balance of coverage and capacity. High-band (millimeter wave) is best for capacity, but at the expense of coverage. To the extent that T-Mobile expects to increase capacity of its U.S. network by as much as 14 times over the next few years, primarily by deploying new mid-band spectrum. 


source: Ericsson


Low-band 5G spectrum comes from a mix of refarmed spectrum from early mobile generations (1G, 2G) and previously unused bands. 


Mid-band spectrum covers the 1-GHz to 6-GHz bands. Millimeter runs between 30 GHz and 300 GHz, though capacity in the 24-GHz range is classified as “millimeter” capacity for purposes of mobile communications. 


The mid-band is of primary importance for 5G globally because it offers a balance of capacity increases and coverage not so different from low-band spectrum. That helps the business case as use of mid-band spectrum obviates the need for many small cells. 


U.S. mobile operators and regulators have had to work around the fact that much of the 5G mid-band spectrum already was allocated to other users. So spectrum sharing and reallocation of the C-band formerly used by satellite service providers have been key mechanisms for making mid-band spectrum available. 


Though the 3.55-GHz to 3.7-GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) added 80 MHz of shared and 70 MHz of licensed spectrum for mobile use, th


No comments:

Post a Comment

Is Sora an "iPhone Moment?"

Sora is OpenAI’s new cutting-edge and possibly disruptive AI model that can generate realistic videos based on textual descriptions.  Perhap...