Professor Jeff Andrews discussed the telecommunications industry’s push toward a 5G LTE network that will accommodate an increasing number of devices and the associated demand for mobile data capacity at the Texas Wireless Summit.
Andrews, a 5G LTE expert, is an endowed professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, who has worked with Qualcomm, Samsung, the WiMAX Forum, Sprint, Intel, Microsoft and other companies.
“LTE has been a major success,” Andrews told RCR Wireless News at the Texas Wireless Summit. “It’s the first truly global mobile data standard.”
“It’s natural to ask, ‘What’s going to come next?’ There’s a great deal of inertia on LTE. There’s a view that five years from now or so — mobile data keeps doubling every year — we’ll need something that’s even more powerful than LTE, more flexible, can use other types of spectrum, perhaps integrate more easily with Wi-Fi. There’ll be an ongoing effort to improve the network.”
From an infrastructure perspective, Andrews picked out three primary differences between 4G LTE and 5G LTE: utilization of more, possibly unlicensed, spectrum; densification in urban areas with femto cells and pico cells; and more antennas.
The 12th annual Texas Wireless Summit was held Nov. 14 and hosted by UT-Austin’s Wireless Networking and Communications Group and the Austin Technology Incubator.
For more video from the Texas Wireless Summit, click here to visit the RCR Wireless News YouTube channel.
