Frequency Range 3 is between 7.125 GHz-24.25 GHz
With help from Keysight Technologies, Qualcomm Technologies has established what is claimed to be the industry’s first end-to-end interoperability and data connection in Frequency Range 3 spectrum.
3GPP’s Frequency Range 3 falls between 7.125-24.25 GHz. Frequency Range 1 covers bands below 6 GHz, and Frequency Range 2 are bands above 24 GHz. FR3, as Keysight explained, provides wider bandwidths that can support very high-speed transmission of large amounts of data. The spectrum is under consideration for use in future 6G systems as well as in 5G-Advanced.
The connection was established using Keysight’s E7515P UXM 5G wireless test platform and a 5G Qualcomm Technologies mobile test platform, or MTP, which is a smartphone reference design that serves as a test device. The interoperability test focused on user equipment (UE) calibration and radio frequency non-signaling verification, according to Keysight, and subsequently, “a full-stack data connection” was established between the MTP and Keysight’s 5G network emulation solutions, in order to examine the “feasibility of utilizing the … band for network connections between a 5G base station and a next-generation mobile device.”
“This industry-first milestone will accelerate the design and deployment of the 5G-Advanced and 6G devices,” said Tingfang Ji, VP of engineering at Qualcomm Wireless Research, which is part of Qualcomm Technologies, in a statement.
Lucas Hansen, VP of Keysight’s Wireless Devices and Operators unit, said that the FR3 testing achievement “will accelerate the 5G-Advanced and 6G device design cycle and the time it takes to bring new devices to market.”
As the global telecom industry seeks more spectrum in which 6G systems could operate, there is a large amount of interest in using the lower portion of FR3 for wide-area coverage, much like midband spectrum in the 3 GHz range is serving as a coverage layer for 5G networks. Qualcomm is working on a prototype “Giga-MIMO” system to support this use of FR3.
