Ongoing RAN standardization work is paving the way for future 5G Advanced technology
During a session at RCR Live Telco Reinvention in April, Doug Pulley, chief solutions architect at Picocom, explained that a number of actors including the International Telecommunications Union, the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance, the World Radio Council and new organizations such as the O-RAN Alliance are currently working to define the trends and objectives of the future Radio Access Networks (RAN).
“There are a number of actors doing their business, as they’ve done in previous generations of radio access network and mobile technology,” said Pulley. And these groups are “busy trying to identify the trends, the objectives for networks, performance targets, the requirements and to see whether there’s any new spectrum required to support these sorts of things moving towards the 6G world.”
For its part, Picocom contributes to RAN development as a semiconductor company that focuses on the design and marketing of O-RAN standard-compliant baseband SoCs and carrier-grade software products for 4G and 5G small cell infrastructure.
Pulley added that once these organizations define the general trends and goals of new RAN models, the 3GPP will work on the detailed specifications that will pave the way for future RAN networks. “The 3GPP will sharpen their pencils and write down how these things are supposed to work. And newer organizations such as the O-RAN Alliance and the Small Cell Forum will think about how to implement the equipment and what specifications might be needed for interoperability of open-type implementations,” he said.
Many industry experts expect 5G to be ramped up to full capability around the same time as Open RAN deployments, as there will be many years to go with 5G before the industry moves to the next generation. Experts also believe that O-RAN will certainly be a key part of future 6G systems.
Some operators and other stakeholders are beginning to ask if it is necessary to start thinking about 6G even as operators are still in the midst of their global 5G deployments. Others, however, claimed Pulley, have questioned this need to already be thinking about 6G. But he explained that the usual 10-year period to conceive a new generation of mobile technology could be too long given the rapid changes in the tech landscape, as these cycles don’t take into account the current pace of change and are not able to adopt new technologies quickly.
There is consensus in the industry that 5G Advanced, which will hit the market around 2025, will bring new enhancements to current mobile network capabilities and use case-based support to help mobile operators with 5G commercialization, long-term development of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and network energy savings for a fully automated network. 5G Advanced will optimize capabilities for specific vertical industries and applications. Some of these innovations include AI-enabled end-to-end communications, support for new spectrum bands, wide-area IoT evolution and private networks.
5G Advanced will bridge 5G with 6G as cellular research and development for as-yet-unstandardized 6G systems has already begun, with standards work on 6G expected to emerge as soon as the 2027 timeframe, and 6G networks themselves around 2030. According to Pulley, 5G Advanced can be considered a proving ground for some future 6G systems but added that stakeholders should keep in mind just how demanding this transition will be. “Adding a new generation of mobile technology is very expensive, [an] awful lot of effort,” he warned. “So, if we do it, we need to make sure it’s worth it. It’s like go big or go home.”
