New transmitter-receiver for 5G communications: Meeting strict speed standards
Researchers develop a transmitter-receiver with antenna arrays that can cope with the high-speed requirements for 5G mobile communications.
Oulu, October 18, 2019
Mobile communications have become ubiquitous in modern societies and researchers worldwide are constantly working on developing technology to allow for the new generation of mobile networking: 5G. As a successor to LTE, the key requirements agreed on by countries working on this area are the use of significantly higher frequencies (around 28 GHz) and unprecedented upload/download speeds for end users or “customers”. The technical difficulties to achieve this are varied and are constantly being tackled.
A research team at the University of Oulu, Finland, focused on developing a transmitter-receiver (“transceiver”) for wireless millimeter-wave communications, which operates with electrical signals at frequencies in the range of 27.5 to 28.5 GHz. Their findings have been published in the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute Journal.
The transceiver they designed will be mainly used in 5G network elements in what is known as “backhaul links”. These are the connections between the final antennas that serve the end users and larger base station controllers, which aggregate the traffic generated by all the users connected to the antennas. The base stations are ultimately always connected to the truncal part of the network known as the “core”.
The transceiver developed in this study is one of the first reported to comply with the 5G standard in urban scenarios, where large moving objects such as cars cause difficulties in transmission. The data rates demanded by the 5G standard are 10 times higher than in LTE, and thus the transceiver developed employs multiple arrays of which each contains multiple antennas. These antennas can be adaptively and electronically “steered” and their radiation pattern can be widened to optimize their transmission capabilities for a given context.
In addition, the researchers also proposed a new methodology by which the intrinsic performance of such antenna array receivers can be measured more accurately and easily. This performance index is called the “noise figure” and is a measure of how much a signal is distorted (how much noise is added) when it passes through the receiver. Measuring the noise figure of antenna arrays in the old way would involve tedious and costly setups involving multiple cables. Instead, the new approach can be performed wirelessly over the air. “The proposed method has some advantages over the traditional wired noise figure measurements, especially if a high number of receiver paths are measured simultaneously,” explains Marko Leinonen, one of the lead researchers and Project Manager of the of the Centre for Wireless Communications in the University of Oulu.
The development of this transceiver brings us closer to the new generation of wireless communications, in which not only will all existing mobile applications be improved, but new ones will also emerge as a result of the higher data rates, lower latency, and higher reliability. Examples of these applications include virtual-reality sharing and high-definition 360-degree video streaming, which are both currently infeasible due to the limitations of 4G. Moreover, 5G users will enjoy high-speed network availability even while on high-speed urban vehicles, such as the metro and buses. “Our various analyses on our proof-of-concept transceiver and antenna array indicate our system can reach one of the key 5G requirements, namely a high data speed of 2.5 Gbps in a range of 200 m,” concludes Marko Leinonen. The researchers hope that their contribution helps us reach a more connected lifestyle where sharing and enjoying moments anywhere on the go is possible in new ways.
Reference
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4218/etrij.2017-0231
Name of authors: Marko E. Leinonen, Giuseppe Destino, Olli Kursu, Marko Sonkki, and Aarno Pärssinen
Affiliation: Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
Social media hashtags: #5G #6G #wireless #RF #mmW
Twitter accounts: @UniOulu @6Gflagship @SuomenAkatemia
About Marko E. Leinonen
Marko E. Leinonen has been working and researching on wireless communication systems for over twenty years. Currently, he is the Project Manager at the Centre for Wireless Communications in the University of Oulu, where he received his Master of Science and Licentiate of Technology degrees. His work is not limited to 5G, but also includes research on 6G, which will be the subsequent generation of mobile communications. He believes it is essential to study how new technologies could improve the communication between people.
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