Xgnlab 2018 Q1

xgnlab
Technological Magazine for Next Gen Telecom & Networks

Technology Geeks, Students, Researchers, Industry people, Sales & Marketeers
Edition 2018 Q1
Editor Desk
Our Editor
Saurabh Verma
Saurabh has vast industry experience in telecom and networking domain. He started his career
with Govt of india’s premier R&D center and worked across various MNCs in product
development and service delivery. His area of expertise lies in business creation and advance
telecom solutions in next generation networks, 4G & 5G.
2018 Q1 xgnlab page 1

Editor Desk
“A magazine in this new era is a cache of information”, with this belief we start here.
It give us a sense of immense pleasure and pride to release the first edition of our much awaited
magazine on next generation networks for telecom, media and communication.As we know we
are entering into the era of everywhere connectivity with most of the thing around us going to
get connected. In this era, where many of things in our day to day life would be technology
enabled and influence our way of living, we need to equip ourselves with the latest information
and a bit of significant knowledge on technological aspects.
Keeping such view in mind we thought to release a magazine about the next generation
advancement in technology, specifically in area of telecommunication, networking, mobile,
wireless, communication, and media. The magazine will cover about the emerging ecosystem,
expert views, latest news, technology discussion, technical insight, big stories and much more
interesting and valuable articles.
We expect this magazine to benefit at maximum to professionals, students, researchers and

industry peoples and also to common people, who want to make themselves aware of
technology around them.
We would be bringing this magazine once in a quarter as of now, covering most of the
upcoming technologies those going to settle down in upcoming years, mostly like Internet of
things (IOT), Machine to Machine (M2M), High speed broadband, 5G, WiFi, Cloud Computing,
Blockchain etc.
Our focus will be on the value and significance of the contents here, we would be providing
every edition as a pack of significant topics, which would be giving required information, not only
for awareness but to be used for their thinking, decision making and knowledge creation.
With all these in mind and hoping a good start here we would also be expecting your feedback
to us at s.verma@xgnlab.com
All the best and many thanks, enjoy reading.
Saurabh verma
Editor Desk.
Xgnlab
contact@xgnlab.com
www.xgnlab.com

Editor Desk
Dear Readers
It’s an immense pleasure to put forward the concept of tracking technological pace and industry
outcomes in form of a technological magazine. This will bring to you the information worth to
track for a significant span of time, and technology that is trending and generating the
ecosystem to cope with.
Although in this era of information and internet, mostly the information can be obtained with a
click or touch on your smart screens, but there is a need for providing relevant information and
technological updates in a manner worth for understanding and taken forward.
The magazine will keep the traction at par and provide the things in way of technological
research and market research.
We will cover the technical aspect for understanding in simple and informative form and also
provide the insight through tech discussions and whitepapers.
We would be happy to find your interest here and would require your encouragement and
patronage.
We are open here for advertising and sponsorship.
You can write to us on mail at info@xgnlab.com
Pooja Verma
Conceptualized & forwarded
Xgnlab
contact@xgnlab.com
www.xgnlab.com

Contents
2018 Q1 xgnlab page 3+1

News
MWC 2018 (Feb 26 - Mar 3, 2018)
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News
MWC 2018, took place at barcelona from Feb 26, to Mar 3, 2018. One of the most
prominent event in mobile technology world, participated by all the big giants,
small ventures, incumbents and incubators - OEMs, technology providers,
service providers, operators, vendors etc. As like many previous years, this year
also, many interesting takeaways are available to share in form of partnerships,
collaborations, product focus or technology focus.
Also open RAN groups such as the xRAN

CISCO to lead Open Foundation, a consortium formed in 2016
to develop and promote the virtualization
vRAN Initiatives of the RAN and the use of open standards.
Vodafone has been working on
And now with all above being there Cisco
software-defined RAN for the past year, and
announced at MWC 2018 that it is to lead
it's now contributing the project to TIP. Open vRAN initiatives.
Vodafone and Intel will lead the openRAN
The new Cisco group has some of the same
group, which will develop RAN technologies
members as xRAN and OpenRAN, including
based on General Purpose Processing Intel and Mavenir. Other vendors involved
Platforms (GPPP) and disaggregated in Cisco's Open vRAN initiative include
Altiostar, Aricent, Phazr, Red Hat, and Tech
software.
Mahindra.
"This is the opening of a system that runs Interesting to note here that India's
radio as a software on top of general Reliance Jio has also joined Open vRAN
purpose processes and interworks with group.
independent radio," said Santiago Tenorio,

head of networks at Vodafone Group. The
project will work to reduce the costs
Ericsson and Dialog Axiata
associated with building mobile networks partner to roll out the first
and make it easier for smaller vendors to commercial massive IoT
enter the market. network in Sri Lanka
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Dialog Axiata PLC, Sri Lanka’s largest impressive patent portfolio, had received
telecommunications services provider, and over 50,000 patents.
Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) have rolled out the
first commercial Massive IoT network At MWC 2018, the company debuted a new
supporting both Cat-M1 and NB-IoT 3GPP compliant 5G core network solution,
technologies in South Asia. microwave deployment, base station and
Deployed across Dialog Axiata’s Sri Lankan terminals. There was also a slew of
network, the advanced mobile network announcements with operators, centering
technology will help accelerate the on trials and collaboration. The Open
proliferation of IoT devices. It will further ROADS incubator program and Huawei X
develop the IoT ecosystem in the country Labs both continue to further 5G industry
by offering the superior coverage, long collaboration and develop proof of
battery life and cost-effective solutions to concepts for future services.
enterprises.
Ericsson delivers Cat-M1 (LTE-M) and

NB-IoT support as a software activation to WBA pushing industry
Dialog Axiata’s existing LTE Radio Access
Network. Ericsson's Massive IoT solutions
for seamless, secure
for Cat-M1 and NB-IoT devices have great and widely covered next
advantages including low cost, low power
consumption, deep coverage, massive gen WiFi HotSpots.
connections, and more secure and reliable
By Tiago Rodrigues, General Manager of
transmission.
the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA)

This year at Mobile World Congress (MWC)
Huawei is betting big on Barcelona a group of companies, many of
them members of the Wireless Broadband
5G Alliance (WBA) together with GSMA, Fira
Barcelona and City of Barcelona developed
In 2013 the company made an ongoing
a pilot on Wi-Fi Roaming across a series of
pledge to spend $600 million on 5G wireless
hotspots in Barcelona using Passpoint
research and development through 2018.
technology and WRIX standards to deliver a
Over the past three years, Huawei has also
seamless and secure roaming service
been one of Europe’s largest patent filers.
between different networks and service
All of this points to the company’s efforts to
providers.
strengthen competitiveness in the global
marketplace. The company maintains an Project Goals
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The goal of this project was to accelerate Boingo Wireless, Unitronics, CellNex and
market understanding and adoption of Think Smarter for all the configurations and
Passpoint technology, network testing. All the hotspots where
interoperability and Wi-Fi roaming services interconnected using the concept of a
based on WRIX standards, creating what central roaming Hub facilitated by Boingo
WBA defines as Next Generation Hotspot Wireless, BSG Wireless and
(NGH). This type of project falls in to the Accuris-Networks.
Testing and Trials programs from WBA to
accelerate business opportunities and Additionally WBA invited service providers
technology adoption – something WBA has with commercial NGH/Passpoint services to
been doing since 2008. join the project and provide roaming to
their customers during the duration of
Over 2200 hotspots were made live; from MWC Barcelona. Mobile operators, cable
Fira Gan Via and Fira Montjuic where GSMA operators, ISPs, pure WiFi providers and
MWC is hosted, over 300 APs across users from enterprises that already have
Barcelona, in some of the key tourist Passpoint deployed in their offices; all these
locations, like the Ramblas, Plaza Catalunya, companies came together and used all
Passeig de Gràcia, train stations among these hotspots across Barcelona for their
many other sites in the City and in El Prat benefit of their customers as if they were at
Airport. their home network or office.
Overall the plan was to setup a wide WBA and GSMA working together
coverage of a Wi-Fi/Passpoint/NGH
network across MWC Fira Exhibition Center, This is not the first time the WBA has
transportation hubs (airport and train promoted a NGH/Passpoint network during
stations) and outdoor coverage in City major events like MWC Barcelona but this
center. In all these locations Passpoint time four major improvements were
technology was activated and a specific achieved:
SSID was set up for the project to deliver to
the end users a cellular like experience over 1. Increased coverage beyond the Fira
the Wi-Fi networks, full automatic Exhibition Center. The project included
connection to the Wi-Fi hotspots – without private (enterprise Wi-Fi by Fira Barcelona),
any manual intervention from the end Municipal Wi-Fi (by City of Barcelona) and
users. Airport Wi-Fi (by AENA, state own company
to manage the Spanish airports)
Who was involved?
2. Mobilize enterprises users from
Cisco Systems played the role of major companies that have already deployed
technology provider and was supported by Passpoint at their offices and headquarters,
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several companies got involved either location and flows of movement of those
directly or through iPASS services. devices across and within the multiples
hotspots.
Our thanks to all those who participated.
Over 25 companies participated in this

project and WBA had the honor to
coordinate this initiative over the last 4
months and work with some of the best
industry professionals and Wi-Fi experts.
Tremendous amount of data have come out
of this initiative but we will leave it to
project participants to provide their case
studies and reports, so stay tuned.
Project participants: GSMA, WBA, Cisco,

Boingo Wireless, City of Barcelona, Fira
Barcelona, Unitronics, Cellnex, Think
Smarter, BSG Wireless, Accuris Networks,
AT&T, T-Mobile US, Sprint, Mobily,
Telecom 26, Softbank, Shaw
Communications, Spectrum (Charter
Communications), ER Telecom, iPass and
3. Only involved operators / carriers with several enterprises with their employees.
Passpoint/NGH services commercially
available, like AT&T, Charter Over 50 people were involved on the
Communications, Softbank or Boingo project and we thank you all for making this
Wireless. This decision removed any happen, but I would like to point out my
on-boarding obstacles making a truly gratitude to Jordi Cirera and Toni Carol
seamless experience to all users, just like Vilanova (from the City of Barcelona), Alex
cellular. Williams and Jon France (from GSMA),
Carlos Sanchez and Xavier Michavila
4. Generated anonymized analytics from Asensio (from Fira Barcelona), Mir Alami
the multiple hotspots to provide and Matt MacPherson (from Cisco), Derek
information to all venue owners Peterson and Kishore Raja (from Bongo
participating on the project. Think Smart Wireless), Antoni Montis (Unitronics), Blaz
developed real time analytics, including Vavpetic (from iPASS), Pedro Salvatella
flows and volumes of devices connected by
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(Cellnex) and Brendan O’Brien (from Think

Smarter).
Making the vision a reality
This initiative represents somehow my

vision for Public Wi-Fi with multiple venue
owners working together from private,
public and municipal sectors alongside of all
types of operators/carriers and enterprise
users – Wi-Fi is seamless, interoperable,
secure and widely available – an entire
ecosystem coming together and WBA and
its member are making this vision a reality.
Looking forward for MWC 2019 and to take

this initiative to the next level with more
coverage, more services and more end
users – interested in these type of
initiatives? Do you have ideas to make it
more valuable? You are welcome and let’s Huawei Showcased
make WiFi seamless, secure and
interoperable across the entire ecosystem. Innovations in Intelligent
Network Maintenance at
the MWC 2018
Huawei information, Mobile World
Congress (MWC) 2018, Huawei showcased
multiple innovations in intelligent network
maintenance, including risk prediction and
prevention, fault self-healing, and
assistance for intelligent root cause
locating. To address various network
maintenance challenges, Huawei adopts
emerging digital technologies, opening a
new era for intelligent maintenance.
Huawei is dedicated to helping operators
build zero-outage robust networks.
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Huawei robust network service solution troubleshooting is improved by over

applies big data analysis, artificial 60%.
intelligence (AI), and other emerging The solution uses offline training
technologies to network maintenance. This and online learning engines to
innovative solution predicts and helps constantly optimize prediction
prevent some faults. When a fault occurs, models and algorithms and continue
the solution provides self-healing and enhancing a comprehensive
intelligent aided analysis to rapidly identify prediction and prevention system.
and rectify the root cause, minimizing the The solution implements an
impact on services. Machine learning is intelligent O&M system based on big
used to process repeated and massive data data technologies, improving O&M
analysis and greatly improves O&M and promoting network innovation.
efficiency. This solution intelligently It accumulates extensive data on
analyzes various historical and live network fault recovery experience and
data to identify risks from multiple network data, to improve predictive
dimensions, including hardware sub-health, and preventive maintenance and
software running status, network network self-healing. In addition, it
protection, network connection, analyzes the root causes of network
redundancy reliability, resources and issues, helping to constant product
capacity, and service risks. Additionally, improvement.
special service solutions can be customized Huawei's robust network service solution
based on Huawei's global maintenance has been successfully implemented and
knowledge base. explored in multiple global projects.
This pioneering solution uses Through joint innovation, Huawei worked
algorithms extracted from fault with China Mobile Hainan and used this
models, including the feature solution to build an intelligent O&M system
preserving projection analysis based on self-learning to maximize the
algorithm, multi-indicator value of network big data and prioritize
association analysis algorithm, preventive maintenance. This project
automatic feature mining algorithm, received the Editors' Choice Award 2017
and intelligent partitioning (Mobile Network Innovation Award) from
algorithm. These algorithms are the People's Posts and Telecommunications
used to complete the practice of News Agency in China. Huawei will explore
multiple prediction and prevention risk prediction and prevention in more
subjects at the device layer, network scenarios, including 5G, IoT, home
layer, and service layer. The broadband, and enterprise customers, and
accuracy of predictions is over 85%, will continue enhancing capabilities in data
and the efficiency of collection and analysis efficiency, algorithm
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optimization, and scenario-based fault The company did not elaborate on the cost
modeling. efficiency of the latest in-building wireless
In the future interconnected digital world, solution to enhance coverage.
robust networks will be the basis for digital Era’s Wide-area Integration Node (WIN)
service success and a good service resides in the C-RAN hub and routes
experience. Huawei's successful experience baseband capacity to a distribution point
in developing innovations for intelligent within the served building or campus.
maintenance accelerates breakthroughs in CommScope said that Era allocates
and applications of key technologies for baseband capacity where it is needed while
intelligent O&M, provides a reference for reducing the amount of onsite head-end
the future construction of intelligent equipment and the amount of fiber needed
network maintenance systems. for signal transport by up to 90 percent.
“We have invested to create an all-digital
platform architecture that upends the
economics of in-building wireless and
ushers in a new era and standard for
distributed antenna systems,” said Matt
Melester, senior vice president, Distributed
Coverage and Capacity Solutions,
CommScope.
CommScope holds 164 patent families for
Commscope showcase the technological innovations incorporated
in Era. CommScope Era’s digital architecture
Era, a C-RAN antenna enables capabilities that analog DAS simply
cannot. Engineers can make changes in
system, at MWC 2018 capacity re-allocation, soft re-sectorization,
CommScope Era, a C-RAN antenna system system setup and diagnostics with a few
that leverages wireless operators’ initiatives clicks of a mouse.
to centralize and virtualize baseband radio Era also transports Gigabit Ethernet
assets. backhaul to each remote node, which can
US-based wireless technology major said be used for separate Wi-Fi networks, IP
the CommScope Era will be a key enabler security systems or to support a small cell
for network densification in LTE Advanced, overlay needed for future network
Gigabit LTE and 5G. CommScope Era expansion.
responds to operators’ needs for options Telecom engineers can use CommScope Era
that will make in-building wireless more to enhance wireless coverage in venues
affordable for building owners and because the in-building solution features
commercial real estate companies. access points that are available in a range of
power levels, with copper and fiber
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connectivity and outdoor and plenum and IoT technology, and advanced network
ratings. deployments.
In addition, the in-building solution
supports interleaved MIMO using patented The strategy of Anritsu is to tap the rapidly
technology that can offer up to 80 percent growing 5G and IoT segments targeting
of collocated MIMO speeds over a SISO chipset companies, telecom equipment
(single input/single output) infrastructure. manufacturing companies, device makers
Era uses IT-standard copper and fiber-optic and mobile operators during the testing and
infrastructure and allows for the sharing of verification phase of product launches.
existing fiber networks, significantly
reducing fiber costs. The company is silent
Anritsu said its testing solutions also
about the actual savings in fiber costs.
support LTE-Advanced Pro chipset and
Telecom operators are looking at optimizing
device tests including, 5CC and 4×4 MIMO
their cost in order to enhance efficiency of
configuration at data speeds up to 2 Gbps,
their operations.
performed by any of Anritsu’s device
Kyung Mun, principal analyst, Mobile
testers.
Experts, said: “Driving down costs and
barriers to in-building wireless
implementation will be critical for Engineers can use CPRI field installation
supporting the emerging demand for tools such as the MT88220T BTS Master to
connected smart buildings.” provide solutions for CRAN, RF-over-CPRI,
Engineers can make software upgrade to cable installations, “Over-the-Air” (OTA)
the company’s ION-E distributed antenna and “direct connection” RF testing.
system to ensure interoperability with Era. Engineers can also do spectrum
CommScope did not reveal the deployment management and interference hunting with
details of ION-E distributed antenna system. the MS2760A Ultraportable Spectrum
Analyzer, and rapid I&M of WAN’s with the
MT1000A All-in-One testing.
Anritsu Shown its 5G Anritsu Customs Software Solutions helps

products at MWC 2018 businesses accelerate their time to market
by using the power of data and devices
Anritsu presented its latest technologies in through custom software and development.
test, measurement and monitoring
solutions at the Mobile World Congress Anritsu Service Assurance solutions provide
(MWC) 2018 in Barcelona. better visibility of telecom network and
service performance enabling
The focus was on new testing and Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to
monitoring challenges for 5G-NR, LTE-A-Pro
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deliver an optimized Customer eXperience head-mounted VR displays in time for 5G’s

(CX) using actionable intelligence. arrival.
The test and measurement company’s Snapdragon 700

MasterClaw portfolio including eoLive,
eoSearch, eoSight and eoMind delivers Chipset major Qualcomm Technologies has
advanced analytics driven insights leading introduced the new. Qualcomm
to unparalleled customer satisfaction and Snapdragon 700 Mobile Platform for
perception. smartphone device OEMs.
In addition, Anritsu’s NFV Closed Loop On-device AI supported by Artificial

Assurance provides seamless visibility of Intelligence (AI) Engine, and improvements
operations along with unrivalled to camera, device performance and power,
troubleshooting. supported by the heterogeneous compute
power of premium features including the
Qualcomm snapdragon Spectra ISP, Kryo CPU, Hexagon Vector

Processor and Adreno Visual Processing
5G solution is ready subsystem are the features.
Qualcomm Technologies’ 5G Module “The Snapdragon 700 Mobile Platform

Solution integrates more than a thousand Series will bring premium tier technologies
components across a few modules and features into more affordable devices,
optimized to accelerate deployments and something our global OEM customers and
lower barriers to entry, by further consumers are demanding,” said Alex
eliminating complexities in device design. Katouzian, senior vice president and general
manager, mobile, Qualcomm Technologies.
With sampling expected in 2019, customers

can benefit from a reduction in footprint of Snapdragon 700 products will come with
up to 30 percent compared to designs using the multi-core Qualcomm AI Engine
discrete components. delivering up to 2x improvements for
on-device AI applications compared to the
Snapdragon 660 Mobile Platform.
Qualcomm earlier said it’s working with
OEMs to develop Snapdragon X50-powered
smartphones, mobile hotspots, Always Snapdragon 700 will debut architectures
Connected PCs, and immersive across the mobile platform, including
Qualcomm Spectra ISP, Kryo CPU and
Adreno Visual Processing subsystem, which
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will offer up to 30 percent improvements in Solution and Sprint and Airspan Networks
power efficiency, and better performance for The Magic Box
and battery life across numerous
applications compared to the Snapdragon Best Network Software Breakthrough:
660 Mobile Platform. Huawei for 5G Core Solution
700 Series products will benefit from Best Mobile Authentication & Security
Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ technology, Solution: Evolved Intelligence for Signalling
engineered to get up to 50 percent charge Firewall
in 15 minutes.
Outstanding Mobile Technology – The CTOs’
Snapdragon 700 Tier will feature advanced Choice: Huawei for 5G Ready CloudAIR
wireless technologies with ultra-fast LTE, Solution
carrier Wi-Fi features, as well as enhanced
Bluetooth 5.
Best Mobile Operator Service for
Consumers: Reliance Jio and Cisco for Jio
Mobile Broadband and Digital Services
GLOMO Awards at Best Mobile Service for the Connected Life:

ZTE for ZTE Smart Parking Solution
MWC 2018
Best Use of Mobile Marketing Joint winners:
GSMA today announced the winners for the PHD Online for Spreading Love on LINE and
Global Mobile Awards 2018 (GLOMO
Awards) at the Mobile World Congress 2018 Tenor and Dunkin’ Donuts’ Halloween GIF
in Barcelona. Campaign
GLOMO Awards 2018 winners Most Innovative Mobile App: SMARTIFY and
MOBGEN, part of Accenture Digital for
Best Mobile Network Infrastructure: SMARTIFY
Huawei for 5G Ready Ultra-Wide Band
(UWB) Radio Best Overall Mobile Consumer Innovation –
The Judges’ Choice: Ada for Ada
Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough Joint
winners: Huawei for 5G Ready CloudAIR
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Best Mobile Innovation for Enterprise: SK Best Wearable Mobile Technology: Bragi for
Telecom and uLikekorea for LiveCare The Dash Pro
Best Mobile Innovation for Health: KT for KT Best Connected Consumer Device:
Digital Healthcare Solution and Platform BullGuard for Dojo by BullGuard
“m-Hospital”
Best Mobile VR or AR: Samsung for
Best Mobile Innovation for Education: Samsung Gear VR with Controller
Safaricom and Eneza Education for Shupavu
291 Best Mobile Video Content Service: Reliance
Jio Infocomm for JioTV enabling Jio Digital
Best Mobile Innovation for Automotive: Life
Cisco for Cisco Jasper Control Center 7.0 for
Connected Cars Best Mobile Game: Kabam for
Transformers: Forged to Fight
Best Mobile Innovation for Payment:
Samsung for Samsung Pay Best Content & Media Innovation: Netflix
for Stranger Things: The Games
Best Mobile Innovation for Commerce:
Whisbi for Whisbi Conversational Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging
Commerce Solution for Enterprises Markets: Huawei for RuralStar Connectivity
Solution
Best Mobile Innovation for Smart Cities:
Huawei for NB-IoT Smart City Solution Best Mobile Innovation for Women in
Emerging Markets: Cassava Fintech (Econet
Smart City Award – The Judges’ Choice: Wireless Zimbabwe and Mahindra Comviva
Bristol for EcoCash Savings Club)
Best Smartphone 2017: Apple for Apple Best Mobile Innovation supporting
iPhone X Emergency or Humanitarian Situations:
Ericsson and UN World Food Programme
Disruptive Device Innovation: Apple for for Ericsson Response – Caribbean 2017
Apple TrueDepth Camera
Best Use of Mobile for Accessibility &
Inclusion: Microsoft for Seeing AI – Talking
Camera for the Blind Community
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The Green Mobile Award: Huawei for

Zero-Footprint TubeStar Solution
Outstanding Mobile Contribution to the UN

SDGs: eWATERpay, Eseye and Selcom for
eWATERpay
Outstanding Contribution to the Mobile

Industry: Huawei
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Technology Perspectives
Gigabit LTE
“Gigabit LTE is a specific configuration of

ABI Research on the LTE Advanced Pro standard and is
expected to account for 70% of LTE
Gigabit LTE Advanced Pro subscriptions by 2026,” says
Prayerna Raina, Senior Analyst at ABI
LTE will grow to approximately 50% in 2024.
Research. “It is a critical network milestone
The most advanced LTE service, Gigabit LTE,
for operators in an increasingly competitive
is expected to near two million
environment in the evolution to 5G. It is
subscriptions globally in 2017, which is less
essential for operators to support the
than 5% of LTE Advanced Pro subscriptions
ever-rising bandwidth needs of consumers,
in 2017. Gigabit LTE devices, launched in
while also upgrading the network to
2017, will far exceed the subscription
support 5G networks in future.”
numbers, as few cell sites are expected to
reach Gigabit LTE speeds in 2017. Gigabit As Gigabit LTE offers higher bandwidth to
LTE is a pivotal piece of an advanced 4G consumers and very efficient use of
mobile network that can support an spectrum for operators, ABI Research
operator’s mobile service goals over the expect more operators to launch Gigabit
next six to eight years and beyond. LTE globally over the next year and a half.
Sprint launched the first Gigabit LTE service
for mobile devices was in New Orleans, years, we expect mobile networks to evolve
Louisiana in March 2017. Telstra launched a considerably with the proliferation of LTE
Gigabit LTE mobile hotspot service in Advanced, LTE Advanced Pro, and Gigabit
Sydney, Australia in February 2017, and is LTE on one hand and the launch of 5G on
expected to support Gigabit LTE mobile the other hand. The vendor ecosystem is
devices as they become available. Monaco essential to this network evolution with
Telecom launched a mobile Gigabit LTE device availability being critical for the
service in April 2017. ABI Research expects service launch. It is, therefore, imperative
additional launches to take place this year for vendors to align their competitive
from all key operators in the U.S., as well as strategies with the operators’ network
by some operators in Asia, Europe, and transition timeline as well as alliances in the
Canada. ecosystem.”
“Today, operators globally are in various These findings are from ABI Research’s
stages of upgrading their LTE networks,” “Network Technology and Market Tracker”
concludes Raina. “Over the next four to six report.
You will have to buy the report from -
https://www.abiresearch.com/market-research/product/1026997-network-technology-and-ma
rket-tracker/
Emerging Ecosystem & Trends

The interesting part of the story is that Gigabit LTE is being taken on high demand from
operators and service providers all the major operators in US are planning to deploy the Gigabit
LTE capability in their network this year, which is also being seen as the pre-step for advancing
towards 5G capability. Also the respective ecosystem like device manufacturers are gearing up
for it. Some of the devices available include Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and Note8, HTCHTCCY +0%’s
U11, LG’s V30 and the Moto Z2 Force.
Gigabit LTE is coming from the LTE adv pro standards which is utilising advance carrier
aggregation ( 3x CA ) with 4x4 MIMO and high modulation like 256 QAM. Essentially it is best
utilization of more frequency spectrum for high data rates, theoretically of gigabit. However,
Gigabit LTE is bringing significantly faster speeds to operators’ networks than they had before,
and operators are very eager to adopt it. The reason for this isn’t because they’re planning to
charge extra for Gigabit LTE, but because it helps make their network more efficient. This
ultimately translates to faster average speeds for all users, not just those on Gigabit LTE.

Telstra ’s network in Australia, first deployed Gigabit LTE network in the world. Also at US trails
has been taken on Sprints networks at New Orleans.
From research and analyst firm, Moor Insights & Strategy, the speed tst done on LTE adv
network with cat12 devices comes around 162 mbps for Samsung Galaxy s8 and 123 mbps for
OnePlus 5. Whereas for gigabit LTE networks test were taken for speed between 400-500mbps.
Also there going to be more cell sites with Gigabit LTE technologies (like 4x4 MIMO) from all the
carriers, especially T-Mobile . With the addition of LAA from operators in the US, we could very
soon see speeds that will bounce more than that was seen Telstra in Australia and also in New
Orleans. Not only will Gigabit LTE aid in the rollout of 5G, but it produces real performance
improvements

CBRS
What is 3.5GHz Citizens Broadband Radio

Service?
As part of former President Obama national initiative to develop and promote next
generation of wireless networks (commonly referred to as “5G networks”), on April 17,

2015 , the Federal Communication Committee (FCC) adopted a Report and Order and
Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (3.5 GHz Order) that established a new
Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) for shared wireless broadband use of the
3550-3700 MHz band (3.5 GHz CBRS Band). Essentially this is the first unlicensed wireless
spectrum to become available in US in the last decade, allowing growth of innovation in
multiple fields.
“The 3.5 GHz band is an innovation band. As a result of technological innovations and
new focus on spectrum sharing, we can combine it with adjacent spectrum to create a
150 megahertz contiguous band previously unavailable for commercial uses. It provides
an opportunity to try new innovations in spectrum licensing and access schemes to meet
the needs of a multiplicity of users, simultaneously. And, crucially, we can do all of this in
a way that does not harm important federal missions.”
– Tom Wheeler, FCC chairman
Why is CBRS of so important?
Wireless connectivity has become increasingly important in our everyday life. It is widely
used for work, play, and learn by everyone we know.
However, today the wireless communication faces several challenges:
1. Cost of broadband spectrum is extremely high

2. Rural Areas are underserved, preventing large portions of US population from fully
taking advantage of all services and innovations.
3. Emergency services are not available in many areas

4. Rollout of 5G networks are hampered by inadequate spectrum
The new CBRS technology will create additional spectrum available for flexible wireless
broadband use, leading to improved broadband access and performance for consumers.
Additionally, I expect to see wide deployment of wireless broadband in industrial
applications – advanced manufacturing, energy, healthcare, etc. – supporting innovation
and growth throughout our economy.
Several examples of benefits are:
● Better Internet Access to users in urban and rural areas:

● Cellular coverage in previously unserviceable locations (basements, office buildings,
etc):
● Private LTE networks:
● Industrial IoT innovation:
The 3.5 GHz band is an innovation multiple rounds of notice and

band. As a result of technological comment over the past two years. The
innovations and new focus on lowest tier in the hierarchy, General
spectrum sharing, we can combine it Authorized Access (GAA), is open to
with adjacent spectrum to create a 150 anyone with an FCC-certified device.
megahertz contiguous band previously Much like unlicensed bands, GAA will
unavailable for commercial uses. It provide for zero-cost access to the
provides an opportunity to try new spectrum by commercial broadband
innovations in spectrum licensing and users. In the Priority Access tier, users
access schemes to meet the needs of a of the band can acquire at auction
multiplicity of users, simultaneously. targeted, short-duration licenses that
And, crucially, we can do all of this in a provide interference protection from
way that does not harm important GAA users. Finally, at the top of the
federal missions. hierarchy, incumbent federal and
commercial radar, satellite, and other
The draft Report and Order users will receive protection from all
implements a three-tiered sharing Citizens Broadband Service users.
paradigm, which we have explored in

This new tiered sharing paradigm will systems that perform vital national
be enabled by a Spectrum Access security missions. To protect these
System. The SAS takes an age-old role radars, previous reports suggested very
in spectrum management – the large zones around the coasts within
frequency coordinator – and updates it which commercial users could not
for the 21st century through the use of operate. Thanks to an enormous
cloud computing technology. Long amount of collaborative work with
gone are the days of an engineer NTIA and the Department of Defense,
working with pencil and protractor (not these zones are now substantially
to mention pocket protector) to smaller. More importantly, the draft
coordinate users into a band. Report and Order provides a roadmap,
recommended by NTIA and DoD, for
Finally – a few words on protecting operations within any area around the
incumbent federal uses. America’s coast through the use of new sensor
military uses this band for radar technologies.


WiFi - 802.11ax
802.11ax, also called High-Efficiency Wireless (HEW), has the challenging goal of improving the
average throughput per user by a factor of at least 4X in dense user environments. This new
standard focuses on implementing mechanisms to serve more users a consistent and reliable
stream of data (average throughput) in the presence of many other users.
Looking beyond the raw link speeds of 802.11ac, this new standard implements several
mechanisms to serve more users consistent and reliable data throughput in crowded wireless
environments.

High-Efficiency Wireless includes the following key

features:
● Backwards compatible with 802.11a/b/g/n/ac

● Increase 4X the average throughput per user in high-density scenarios, such as train
stations, airports and stadiums. -Data rates and channel widths similar to 802.11ac, with
the exception of new Modulation and Coding Sets (MCS 10 and 11) with 1024-QAM.
● Specified for downlink and uplink multi-user operation by means of MU-MIMO and
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) technology.
● Larger OFDM FFT sizes (4x larger), narrower subcarrier spacing (4X closer), and longer
symbol time (4X) for improved robustness and performance in multipath fading
environments and outdoors.
● Improved traffic flow and channel access
● Better power management for longer battery life
802.11ax provides greater Wi-Fi speed and does it through making capacity improvements in
congested network environments, by supporting more users in dense networks and making
more efficient use of spectrum. the difference between 802.11ax and previous Wi-Fi
generations may not be very noticeable for a residential Wi-Fi user, compared to the
improvements in a dense network with many users. The goal is to increase the data rate in a
congested environment by 4x or more.”
802.11ax also offers significant power usage improvements. Qualcomm, for instance, claims
that its WCN3998 chipset reduces Wi-Fi power consumption by up to 67% compared to
802.11ac Wave 2.
The Wi-Fi technology so far has been based on one-on-one device-to-access point
conversations. 802.11ax changes that to multi-user simultaneous support. The capacity
increases will make for a better user experience, with 10x more users able to be supported.
802.11ac with MU-MIMO hasn’t achieved its full commercial deployment potential and was
based on beam-steering. In contrast, 802.11ax makes Wi-Fi more like cellular through the use

of OFDM, and scheduling. The technology comes in closer to what LTE is today in competition,
also same time cellular is moving to 5G, where also it [802.11ax] usher to write place.
Testing and standardization of 802.11ax

Testing 802.11ax offers up some unique challenges that Wi-Fi testing hasn’t previously had to
navigate. One of those is synchronization of devices in the uplink using the AP, in order to avoid
interference. A trigger frame is sent from the AP to the devices and they must respond for
coordination of timing, frequency and power levels. Rohde & Schwarz gives some of the basics
of uplink accuracy testing.
802.11ax along with 802.11ac and previous generations, at both 2.4 and 5 GHz, means that test
times “could go up dramatically.”
Meanwhile, the path to a final standard for 802.11ax has been a rocky one, and the work is still
ongoing. As Intel’s Dan Artisu, vice president of its client computing group and GM of Intel’s
connected home division, noted, the standards work continues and the draft which is
ultimately adopted — and on which certification is based — may differ enough from earlier
drafts that product interoperability could be an issue. The next draft is expected to be voted on
mid-2018.
Some in the industry believe that due to the additional complexity of the 802.11ax standard, it
is important to get 802.11ax chipsets into the hands of engineers sooner rather than later to
help them build devices around the new features. If an OEM does decide to hold back, their
first devices integrating an 802.11ax chipset may come 6 to 18 months behind that of the
competition. the question for OEMs is whether they should wait until the standard is more
stable before adopting an 802.11ax-ready solution. A wait-and-see approach could arguably
result in a longer lead time, and some OEMs may lose out to those who are proactive in getting
their designs ready for the full version of the standard.

WiFi + Cellular
For Gaining more spectrum, there is significant focus on unlicensed band and 3GPP has come
with LTE on unlicensed spectrum with LTE-U and LAA. WiFi being a mature technology in
unlicensed band has its own place and focus is there to combine WiFi and cellular too, earlier
also known as WiFi offload.
Wi-Fi is not as ubiquitous as cellular but finding Wi-Fi is like finding a coffee shop. Though
there are initiatives to make it more ubiquitous as it has potential to cater largest share of
internet data flowing over wireless access networks.
Before going into the main theme of cellular (note, though i want to generalize here for
cellular but i am actually specific to LTE/EPC network while being talking for cellular) and
Wi-Fi convergence, let’s go through some of the points from the cisco VNI report for
2015-2020.
Global mobile data traffic grew 74 percent in 2015. Global mobile data traffic reached 3.7
exabytes per month at the end of 2015, up from 2.1 exabytes per month at the end of 2014.

Mobile offload exceeded cellular traffic for the first time in 2015. Fifty-one percent of total
mobile data traffic was offloaded onto the fixed network through Wi-Fi or femtocell in 2015. In
total, 3.9 exabytes of mobile data traffic were offloaded onto the fixed network each month.
And the forecast …..
Mobile data traffic will reach the following milestones within the next 5 years:
● Monthly global mobile data traffic will be 30.6 exabytes by 2020.

● The number of mobile-connected devices per capita will reach 1.5 by 2020.
● The average global mobile connection speed will surpass 3 Mbps by 2017.
● The total number of smartphones (including phablets) will be nearly 50 percent of global
devices and connections by 2020.
● Because of increased usage on smartphones, smartphones will cross four-fifths of mobile
data traffic by 2020.
● Monthly mobile tablet traffic will surpass 2.0 exabytes per month by 2020.
● 4G connections will have the highest share (40.5 percent) of total mobile connections by
2020.
● 4G traffic will be more than half of the total mobile traffic by 2016.
● More traffic was offloaded from cellular networks (on to WiFi) than remained on cellular
networks in 2015.
● Three-fourths (75 percent) of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2020.
3GPP is continuously evolving its Wi-Fi integration architecture, more attentively since 2008
with rel-8 along with LTE and recent advancement in rel-12 and in rel-13, where it going to be
more like RAN scenario as the radio specific standards will incorporate Wi-Fi network related
parameters. 3GPP has created the dichotomy of Wi-Fi access as trusted and not-trusted and its
solution evolution has been carried around this dichotomy so far. Though Wi-Fi has developed
to the advancement to have it as secure access and there are mechanism, like HOTSPOT 2.0,
defined for making Wi-Fi as trusted network, But Wi-Fi is more like a mushroom network and in
perception is always untrusted.
Assuming Wi-Fi ‘untrusted’ is also the need for providing ubiquitous solution as that makes the
solution universal to accommodate any kind of Wi-Fi access, that’s where the ePDG has become
synonymous to Wi-Fi offload solution. ePDG provide IPsec tunnel with the end device over the
underlying Wi-Fi access network and authenticate devices (with AAA server) and provide access
to EPC core. But Rel 11 onward 3GPP is more inclined to refine it trusted access solution that is

SaMOG/TWAG based with the assumption of the secure radio access due to HOTSPOT 2.0
compliance Wi-Fi APs.
All the advancements for the need of Wi-Fi offload, like HOTSPOT 2.0, ANDSF, RAN specific
incorporation in rel-12 & rel-13 etc., are of necessity but could not be presumed as of being
'must'. The transformation is sequel not a leap forward. We have to think about a universal
approach cater to all, at least for few more years - the ecosystem need to emerge in time.
What's the crux.....
3GPP solution for Wi-Fi integration with cellular has been under the grip of what I call a
inter-RAT cellular paradigm like hand off from one RAT to other RAT. Which is not feasible at all
between these two technology as they are of different nature and from different origin. we
always think to integrate the two non-isotopic networks with complete hand offs i.e. if a device
move from one to other it should completely be with the one, more like 3GPP inter-RAT
hand-offs paradigm. But those two networks are of their own sovereignty and completely
unrelated and with such paradigm the required control or seamless transfer is not feasible at
all. Therefore 3GPP solutions find only point of convergence, at EPC/PGW (rel-8 onwards), as
for the sake of creating a IPCAN session and retain the IP address and so the mobility. Solution
introduced interfaces with AAA server for network authentication and for retaining the context,
QoS, etc.
The solution are seemingly more inclined to IETF kind of approaches for access connectivity, i.e.
connect, authenticate, solicit and access with mobility through anchor router like HA or here
PGW. These integration approaches are superimposed with conceptual perception of hand off
which is deliberately made feasible but not there by design.
That's where term 'Wi-Fi offload' does not bring the fidelity, as there is no feasibility by design.
The most buzzing term in these solutions is ‘seamlessness’ and also the theme of differentiation
and innovation for the solutions mustering up for Wi-Fi offload.
What is of interest to us...

WiFi is not there for hand off or to say in popular term offload. It could be leveraged as
associated network. An associated data path to LTE network by converging at RAN or IP-RAN
through a Local PGW and keeping the common EPC core. This convergence is possible if S1AP
will be terminated at this Local PGW and MME is kept transparent to converged Local network.
EPC/PGW while creating the bearer, based on IPCAN session (contains the policy), will provide
the information, based on policy, which will help Local PGW to distinguish and forward the data
flow.
Wi-Fi and cellular could be converged at radio access level and Wi-Fi can be used an associated
data channel for the mobile access. This feasibility is well accepted now and companies like
Qualcomm have more obsessed approaches. Qualcomm is pursuing the aggregation at radio
link level with a point of convergence at PDCP layer
(https://www.qualcomm.com/invention/research/projects/lte-advanced/lte-wi-fi-interworking)
.
On the convergence of two at RAN, the small cell forum is also putting its attention through
research and industry surveys. Its recent white paper, feb 2016, titled "Industry perspectives,
trusted WLAN architectures and deployment considerations for integrated Small-Cell Wi-Fi
(ISW) networks" SCF states at section 2.0 Integrated small cell Wi-Fi (ISW) networks.....
"other interesting alternatives are possible, namely integration in the SC-APs (i.e. RAN-based
integration) and/or in SC-gateways (i.e. GW-based integration).
Here, the Integration function resides at the edge, possibly in an integrated ISW-AP. RAN-based
integration of licensed/unlicensed access is now being addressed by 3GPP release 13, including
approaches for RAN based integration of Wi-Fi and LTE.
Finally, architectures that integrate WiFi and SCs at the gateway level are possible. For example,
the SC-GW (i.e. H(e)NB-GW) as well as WiFi GW (i.e. ePDG and/or TWAG/TWAP) may be
realized together, along with associated integration functions. At the time of writing, these
architectures are still in consideration and development."
So that's the future.....

This could be done at network level, where you need not to go all the way to PGW at EPC but
having a local PGW at RAN/IP-RAN network. The advantage it will bring is the common EPC for
both cellular and Wi-Fi networks i.e. no need for the transfer of PDN connectivity context like
an inter-RAT scenarios. Only thing is that the solution is not for any kind of Wi-Fi device but it is
for cellular device equipped with Wi-Fi as we need cellular for all the service control level
functionality.
Service delivery is well controlled through the 3GPP PCC architecture that define PCRF, PCEF
(PGW) and Application server (AS) level interaction and coordination also referred to as IPCAN
session. In EPC we need bearer to carry the traffic for specific service. This bearer traffic is
delivered to RAN to reach to end devices over air interfaces or radio channels. EPC provide all
the necessary information as QoS parameter for specific bearer to RAN for required radio
channel capacity. The interface between EPC and RAN is S1 (S1-AP for control path and S1-U for
data path).
Instead of having direct interface between eNB and EPC if we keep a Local PGW node (L-PGW)
to interface with EPC and provide convergence of Wi-Fi network at this L-PGW . A replica of this
PCC architecture can be implemented at this L-PGW level which will decide to deliver the
service at Wi-Fi of Cellular radio. This will definitely need the modification on RAN and EPC
interfaces like s1AP and NAS etc. as L-PGW has to coordinate with MME.

There is nothing to scratch to get go, the provisions of such nature framework and already
there with 3GPP, like for LIMONET
(http://www.3gpp.org/DynaReport/WiVsSpec--500028.htm). We can leverage this for
convergence of the two networks at local network level with a common core.
The Standards for LIPA specific work at 3GPP (23.859) provide the data path connectivity
compressed till local network, although the signaling for that remain intact like a normal PDN
connectivity. This could be taken in principle for the convergence of two networks at local
network level.
Please contact Fundarc Communication for WiFi and Cellular Convergence solution
contact@xgnlab.com
We believe strongly that Service provider can create yielding business case around a
associated Wi-Fi network. The convergence at RAN and at network layer level would be a
pure software solution with existing infrastructure and can be a ready to move solution.
Other specific approaches will be requiring necessary ecosystem around for their success.
We are actively seeking the support and sponsors to extend our POC work. We need support
from service provider and OEMs for widen-out our POC development. Please feel free to
contact us for detail and discussion.
Note : We are strongly pursuing on our believe on next gen network with a central theme of
"Homogeneous connectivity through heterogeneous networks" the solution for Wi-Fi
convergence to cellular is inclined to this theme. We believe technology like MEC is going to
give a master boost to our center theme.
www.xgnlab.com

Exclusive
Exclusive Interview
IEEE is well known for core and fundamental research activities, academics, standards
and industry work on advance technological and scientific subjects. It has always being
to find an elite stature for being associated with it, either for an entity or an individual.
Looking at current scenarios and emerging trends in technological and scientific space
and recognizing highly disruptive and uncertain ecosystem around and need for
transformation of organization like IEEE for upcoming industry and academic need, we
found it to be right time to talk with the people, deserving to be at the helm of affair in
coming time.

Exclusive
VINCENZO PIURI
Professor
University of Milan
Milano, Italy
VincenzoPiuri.org
Vincenzo Piuri (IEEE Fellow, 2001) is Professor of Computer Engineering at University of Milan,
Italy (since 2000; Department Chair in 2007-2012). He has been Associate Professor at Politecnico
di Milano, Italy (1992-2000), visiting professor at University of Texas at Austin, USA (summers
1996-1999), and visiting researcher at George Mason University, USA (summers 2012-2016). He
founded a start-up company for industrial intelligent systems (CEO in 2007-2010).
His research and industrial interests are in intelligent systems, neural networks, pattern
recognition, machine learning, signal/image processing, measurement systems, and fault-tolerant
architectures. He has published 400+ research papers in international journals, conference
proceedings, and books.
He has received several awards and recognitions for scientific contributions and IEEE service. He
is an IEEE Fellow, ACM Distinguished Scientist, IEEE-HKN Member, INNS Senior Member, and
active Member of IEEE Societies/Technical Councils/Affinity Groups (including CIS, ComSoc, CS,
CSS, EMBS, IMS, PHOS, RAS, SMCS, SPS, BIOMC, SYSC, WIE).
Interview
Q. IEEE is mostly perceived as highly technical and academic

and research oriented organization, through its papers, activities,

Exclusive
etc. What do you think about its future role and relevance in highly
disruptive and unsecured emerging technological ecosystems?
A. IEEE should continue to be the leading scientific and professional association
also in emerging technologies and applications in its field of interest, as we did
for smart cities, internet-of-things, cloud computing, and several other topics.
IEEE should continue to disseminate high-quality knowledge, offer networking
opportunities, and provide continuing education in these areas that are
fundamental for industry innovation and our future daily life.
Q. What would be the recent focus for making the IEEE more
aligned with industry and upcoming ventures?
A. Develop more practical knowledge to solve real-world problems and use
standards, including methodologies, guidelines, best practices, and successful
cases, by showing how to translate effectively the knowledge learned in
university courses into working solutions and be more effective in the industry.
– Expand technical activities, communities, and standards in emerging
technologies and applications, multi-disciplinary areas, and areas which are
broadly using technologies in the IEEE field.
– Increase continuing education programs to support the transition from student
to professional, the evolving career of young professionals, entrepreneurship,

Exclusive
and people changing jobs as well as the industry needs for tailored
corporate-wide approaches.
– Extract fundamental and advanced knowledge from the technical material
already available, by knowledge discovery approaches and aggregating this
material, for example, into overviews, tutorials, and webinars.
– Develop services for sharing knowledge through data, algorithms, and
experimental results, with data mining and data analytics, by fostering innovation
in the industry.
– Enhance people networking with specialized forums and events to foster
dissemination of knowledge and best practices, mentoring on technology and
career development, supporting inclusivity, and providing competence directories
and repositories.
-Introduce a recommendation system to facilitate identification of knowledge,
products, services, and volunteering opportunities according to the profiles of
each individual, by taking into account her/his area of work, her/his recent
searches, and the searches of people with similar interests.
Q. Do we have any plan to encourage start-ups by granting fund

and access to IEEE contents?

Exclusive
A. IEEE can help technology innovation and economic development also by
promoting and facilitating the access to knowledge and services for start-ups.
Directories of competences and achievements may be developed to increase
visibility of start-ups and facilitate matching with funding entities. Mentoring may
be expanded to support entrepreneurs. Awards may be expanded to recognize
the excellence and achievements of start-ups, thus contributing to their visibility.
Appropriate agreements and opportunities to access knowledge and services
may be studied for start-ups by considering their limited financial resources,
possibly by facilitating start-ups aggregation and incubators to defragment costs.
Q. What is your utmost priority and what are three points you will
make to re-define IEEE?
A. Nurturing the scientific and professional community, globally and locally, by
ensuring cooperation as One IEEE.
– Continuing to be the trusted source of high-quality knowledge for scientists and
professionals, adopting a human-centric approach, addressing emerging topics,
providing more practical knowledge to professionals, and facilitating the access
to knowledge with a recommendation system;

Exclusive
– Empowering and engaging the IEEE members and all people in the scientific
and professional community, promoting active participation of members in IEEE
management, and ensuring transparency and control of finances;
– Promoting inclusivity and diversity, pervasively embracing the underserved
groups and areas, and reinforcing cooperation among all groups.
Q. How do you see to increase the reach of IEEE across the

globe, either creating representations or setting up franchise.
A. IEEE can further increase its presence around the world by nurturing and
expanding its local roots (i.e., Sections, Chapters, and the other local
organizational units), reinforcing their cooperation with the global organizational
units (i.e., Societies, Technical Councils, and emerging technologies groups) as
One IEEE, and promoting cooperation with national scientific and professional
associations.
Interview was taken by saurabh verma , Chief Technology Consultant & Founder
Director of Fundarc-Comm (xgnlab).
www.xgnlab.com
Watch the full campaign of Mr Vincenzo piuri on youtube
https://youtu.be/YSvgiAxZMW

Specific Technology
LiFi
Light has been always a matter of scientific interest, especially

in modern science. Many of us has heard or some may have
studied about wave particle theory about light, which consider
light either as flood of particles known as photons or
propagation of electromagnetic waves in a range of frequencies
– The visible light, seven colors of rainbow separate out the
frequencies.

Specific Technology
So basically light carries certain information in form frequencies or wavelength

that is process by the human brain to distinguish the color which help to
recognize objects, shapes etc. That is pretty natural phenomena.
In modern communication network information is sent through the modulation of

radio waves, that modulation in digital form is called as data. We all use, now
days, the devices like mobile phones, tablets, etc. to use these data for
information sharing to each other.
As we are becoming use to of this data for our many day to day activities there is
tremendous growth of this data being observed in recent years and we need
advancement in technology to transmit and process it. So we have radio
technologies like – WiFi, Cellular – 2G, 3G, 4G and now coming up 5G to bring
these data to our devices of communications.
What Light can do here?
Light has also been taken here as specific medium like radio to transmit data and
it something developed in line of WiFi, known as LiFi.
The term LiFi was coined by Professor Harald Haas, at a Ted Global Talk back in
2011 where he demonstrated LiFi for the first time. LiFi is a technology, which
provides high speed bi-directional network and

Specific Technology
mobile communication of data using light. LiFi comprises of multiple light bulbs
that form a wireless network, offering a substantially similar user experience, as
with WiFi networks.
How it works?
When a constant current is applied to an LED light bulb, a constant stream of

photons is emitted from the bulb which is seen as illumination. LED bulbs are
semiconductor devices, and therefore the illumination can be modulated at
extremely high speeds which can be detected by the photodetector.
Using this technique high-speed information can be transmitted from an LED light
bulb. It is already there with us in simplistic form like those used in low-cost
infrared communications devices such as remote control units.

Specific Technology
It is high speed, 100X faster, high data density and highly secure technology, to be
used along with other wireless communication systems.
Where the use?
If there is demand of data and also the demand of light, there could be LiFi as best
player of wireless communication.
Its main uses accordingly would in buildings, like for offices, houses, or even in
streets, shelters, hotspots etc.

Specific Technology
Good part is it is a purely green technology, low power, sanitation, in RF hostile

environments such as petrochemical plants and hospitals.
Some interesting facts
LiFi technology can be enabled to dim low enough that a room will appear dark
and still transmit data.
There is no flickering of light observed by human eyes as the rate of change of

illumination is very high nothing in range of perception to any eye.
LiFi is not a line of sight, it uses light reflection, light diffraction etc.
LiFi works in both, day time and in night, nothing to do with environment light.
What’s the cost?
For end user it will be coming embedded with devices like, mobile, laptop, tablet
etc. There would be LED bulb available to install in home’s as well, just like normal
WiFi access points and in similar price range.

Whitepaper
5G in Apprehension - The
Beginning of New Era
Contents
Purpose 44+2
Apprehension 44+2
About Architecture-5G 44+8

Whitepaper
eLAA & LWA – First step towards Converging Paradigm 44+9
Convergence - The Buzz in 5G 44+11
Large Scale Convergence - LSC 44+13
ONAP 44+14
3GPP Northbound API 44+15
MEC-Mobile Edge Computing 44+17
Application Defined Networking - magical dimensions 44+18
The New Radio 44+19
Higher Frequency Spectrum – mmWave 44+20
Massive MIMO Beamforming 44+21
Massive MIMO Beamforming Design and Verification Challenges 44+22
TM9 Functionality 44+22
Challenges Ahead 44+22
Conclusive Remark 44+23
References – 44+26
Author’s info 44+27
Disclaimer - 44+27
© Copyright - 44+27
Purpose
It’s about architecture vision for 5G, which going to be a technology beyond cellular
system. It’s about incorporation of multiple technologies and their advancement under
the notion of “large scale convergence”, which provides universal nature of architecture
evolution and make it application defined. It is not a report or survey; it’s a pure
conceptual write up about end to end 5G vision.
Apprehension
Like 2G, 3G and 4G, 5G is not a distinctive sliver, it is a landscape altogether. 5G is
essentially about a vision that techno savvy people have in combination, for the uses of
currently evolved technologies for the better applicability on most modernize

Whitepaper
applications. In that sense it is not another cellular system only, or a wireless
broadband connectivity system only, but definitely a communication system, which
includes them but have far larger perspective.
The sequential term 5G has comes through to address the ITU-T IMT 2020
recommendation for the next gen communication system to cater the need of upcoming
applications, the improvements over ITU-T advance recommendation for 4G. Mostly
these recommendations caters, spectrum efficiency, high data rates, low latency, High
subscriber density, power efficiency, flexibility, fast deployment etc.
But industry is not limited to these and have taken a larger perspective, 5G is being
seen to enable smart cities, connect vehicles, automate industry, create and analyze
big data for better efficiency, use more spectrum, provide ultimate flexibility, adaptable
to applications, quickly deployable, cater IOT/IOE, must survive with massive devices
connectivity, apply to high density populations etc. etc.
That has turned 5G to go beyond cellular, and entice a never ending brainstorm to talk
about it, and discuss on it, about the possible architecture and respective use cases.
People have also putting their specific doubts about ‘what to be’ and ‘what not to be’
kind of discussions. Some are taking selective approaches to put the thing on ground
and materialize the talks in discussions. Industry analyst ABI Research is forecasting
that mobile broadband operators will generate $247 billion in 5G revenues in 2025.
3GPP officially stamped on NSA mode NR standardization, Industry has taken some
major steps towards 5G by the end of 2017. Those are like, Verizon is providing home
broadband using 5G fixed wireless networks, an effort of replacing fiber, Massive MIMO
touches the ground – VERIZON, ERICSSON and Qualcomm Technologies claim that
they have completed the first ever FDD MIMO fully compatible customer service. South
Korea mobile carrier KT begins installing 5G network in PyeongChang, for upcoming
Olympic in 2018. SK Telecom has plan for 2019 and it created task force of 200 experts
to move on 5G (a much appreciated move). AT&T also has put its plan to bring 5G by
end of 2018, handset devices are also gearing up for early devices in market, by 2018.
Although, there would be much pace to adopt 5G in this year- 2018 and coming one,
but true 5G will take due time to emerge due to much required deliberation and maturity
of technical advances. The real start could be anticipated from 2020 which will be
settling to maturity by 2025.
Most important part of talks and discussions is about 5G monetization and plausible use
cases, in one of the webinar we attended people voted as below for the possible 5G

Whitepaper
uses cases, though it’s a small lot of people, but of industry experts, seems to be giving
a reflection of current perception for 5G technology in general.
Our interest being with, that almost 50% have voted for all of above option, and we
radically proclaim that’s the reality here, relatively shown in vertical bars.
5G is not yet well defined term, and also being hyped to certain extent. This hype is
definitely not exorbitant rather this is the much necessity, because it is based on

Whitepaper
well-grounded though not yet matured technologies. This blurred vision has not yet
induced the confidence to TSPs on part of business decisions, use cases, investment
plan etc. but there is a definite eye on the progress of their development and adaptation
and industry is taking a selective approach so far.
Broadly, the vision for 5th generation wireless networks (5G) is to enable readiness for
applications and use cases for the society of 2020. This would be done by enhancing
network throughput by 10x, network scale and traffic capacity by 100x at network
efficiency that is 100x better than 4G. Higher spectrum utilization, specifically millimeter
bands, is in focus for boosting network throughput by 10x with the goal of supporting
10-20Gbps peak data rates and 100-50 Mbps downlink and uplink sustained traffic. A
much needed throughput for high density requirements like 1 million devices per km2
area.
Key technology for improving spectrum utilization is to use a large number of antennas
at the radio, also called Massive MIMO, for beamforming to allow simultaneous sharing
of the spectrum resources in both time and frequency domain among users. 100x
improvements in network scale and traffic capacity is needed to support massive
machine type (mMTC) communication that will enable connectivity for anything that can
be connected.
5G is about the next generation applications, has to cater the emerging perception of
everywhere connectivity, i.e. widespread coverage, high data rates and high density
spots, and much hyped notion of IOT or IOE, and industry verticals, following need to be
addressed in 5G context.
More Spectrum – Below 6 GHz and Above 6 GHz Specifically Millimeter Waves
Ultra Low Latency & Ultra High Density Uses
Uniform data rates, even in fringe area
Quick service creation and application deployment (<90 min)
High speed, peak and average data rate
Green technology, low power consumption
Unlicensed band /shared bands like CBRS

Whitepaper
Though 5G has taken the larger horizon, in order to define it as a sequential next gen
technology, it has fair continuous transitory requirements. These requirements well
could be putted in perspective like….
1. Tremendous growth of end devices demanding for the connectivity.
2. Ultra-high density requirements.
3. Everywhere connectivity kind of paradigm setting.
4. Eventual increase in high quality video traffic.
5. Spectrum efficiency.
Now coming to next stage applications, which is going to bring almost new set of
requirements and define a leap forward from the previous generation.
1. AR/VR application specific requirements.
2. Industry vertical, like for robotics, automation etc.
3. Mission critical applications, easily and quickly deployable, adaptable and

flexible.
4. Dynamic connectivity like D2D, V2V and V2X.
Many upcoming proposal on 5G impelling to change many facets of wireless stack

functionality that were standardized as part of the 4G releases. The industry is divided
and rightly questioning undoing functionality that is working well in 4G given the
unprecedented success of 4G LTE. Worldwide view of 4G adv pro deployment below
shows the widespread adoption of 4G which is also in pace at current time..

Whitepaper
That’s where 4G and 5G both stream will co-exist, as both will progress in a way like 4G
dependent 5G and standalone 5G. This will be easing the operators too, who have
invested massive on 4G technologies. This approach would be a necessity also to
safeguard their investment and futuristic upgradation.
Broadly, in a nutshell, 3GPP and ITU has categorized 5G use cases in three categories.
• IOT/IOE
• eMBB
• URLLC
IOT/IOE is most evidential use cases for 5G, due to 5G capabilities of connecting
millions of devices per km2 and molding the network for various vertical application
demands by network slicing.
5G will provide everywhere connectivity with high bandwidth data capability, most opt
for application for 5G would be over eMBB, High quality video, video conversation and
live streaming are some of the example people opt for in there next devices as of 5G
capable.
5G ultra low latency has put a separate attention to provide URLLC (ultra-reliable and
low latency communication) applications. 5G radio latency of 1ms and E2E latency of
5-10 ms will provide a remarkable impact of 5G architecture as well.

Whitepaper
URLLC has got visualized for low latency MTC type communication like robotics and
VR/AR application, and also in some cases for mission critical applications too, but
ultra-low latency has far reaching effect on pure 5G architecture definition.
This ultra-low latency would provide a magical paradigm shift in terms of network
availability, consistency and service integrity.
About Architecture-5G
5G Architecture going to be much deliberated conundrum for bringing the much far
sighted simplicity, would be guided by the few much strengthening pillars
1. Complete separation of control and data plane,

2. Distributed control plane & service oriented architecture.
3. Large Scale Convergence in data plane.
4. Access or Edge network & Non-access or Core Network.

Whitepaper
The complete separation of control and data plane give a flexibility in terms of
technology amalgamation where control plane can be taken over by much mature
technology in terms of coordination, scalability and interoperability. No doubt It is about
LTE and its advanced and advanced-pro forms, though some 5G specific improvement
could have to bring in like Control plane latency, reliability and coverage for mass
connectivity.
Whereas data plane would be about converging of various other technologies for
delivering services including LTE as well.

Whitepaper
3GPP has already made official its NSA architecture to include 5G NR. In fact it’s a
fastest move where 5G will take a required pace, where LTE would be an anchoring
technology. NSA is evolution from LTE advance pro technologies like LTE-U, LAA, and
LWA.
3GPP has already planned its road map for next releases to improve LTE latency (to
best suit for 5G control plane) and enhanced bearer connecting in terms of number of
bearers, availability and spectrum efficiency.
eLAA & LWA – First step towards Converging Paradigm

3GPP release 15 is the offcut for 5G but release 14 has also knocking stuff to account
for 5G beginning.
Evolved LAA and upcoming LWA from 3GPP could be very well taken as a profound
way or first steps for converging paradigm. The upcoming 5G architecture would be
having an influential take on such paradigm.

Whitepaper
‘Wi-Fi and cellular’ convergence is the foremost step toward 5G convergence,

specifically for LTE assisted architecture, and much needed solution. This is not about
being curious for LAA or LWA, as these solutions converge at link level, similar to
carrier aggregation and split bearer approach respectively. There are ample possibilities
to converge or aggregate at network level i.e. a smart pipe approach –much flexible for
5G. 3GPP has also turned it focus and accepting the similar requirement for 5G
roadmap.
Also Wi-Fi is coping up with 5G through its advancement like 802.11ax and in
unlicensed high frequency spectrum like for 60GHz, 802.11 Conv.

Whitepaper
Convergence - The Buzz in 5G

We visualize the 5G network as Convergence of various access technologies, which
means the ability of network with best availability as per the need of applications in
flexible, scalable, operational and manageable way. It is not only about convergence of
different technologies only, in terms of technical interworking, but a comprehensive
framework, which allows and enable to deliver the services as per the requirement of
various applications. That is where we visualize it convergence at larger scale or here
said to be as “Large Scale Convergence” or LSC.
LSC means the ability of network to provide the applications, what they want, in
flexible, scalable, operational, manageable and service oriented way, irrespective of
underlying technology (included for 5G). That’s also the way where 5G would be
application defined, and being assumed to provide universal approach to address

Whitepaper
various applications demands that will require to pull-up layers for more abstraction to
address new and versatile dimensions from various applications

Whitepaper
Large Scale Convergence - LSC

● LSC is about the felicitation to make 5G – Application defined network.
● LSC provide – homogeneous connectivity through heterogeneous
networks, an E2E defined paradigm incorporating multiple access
technologies.
● LSC is about to have a comprehensive E2E approach while setting 5G
network.
● LSC facilitate required abstraction to address versatile dimensions of
various applications
● LSC is a felicitation to define the 5G landscape and network slicing.
There comes an eminent need for a right platform to create such framework, which can
emulate necessary abstraction of the large scale facilitation.
These facilitations are in terms of required resources, their orchestration and life cycle
management. In cases also vendor selection and interoperation, not confined to
technologies but incorporate various network technology under pass the 5G landscape.
ONAP has emerged as the Platform for management and orchestration and
enablement. It is about the tools and platform which will help the network to converge,
configure, manage, organize and orchestrate. This will provide the 5G landscape a
comprehensive platform to operate in diversified but with apprehensive approach.

Whitepaper
ONAP
AT&T ECOMP has taken a credible place here in form of ONAP. ONAP now under the
ownership of Linux foundation has taken a comprehensive approach to address this,
rather disruptive scenario in apprehensive way. ONAP is a platform which has taken up
various open source efforts, like ONFV etc., in a framework to harmonize and provide a
unified platform for the service management as well as network management. ONAP
has a modular approach to combine various different project in a harmonized way,
these modules are for orchestrations, configuration, life cycle management etc. etc.
ONAP kind of platform, which the operator need to adapt for 5G, the service creation
and network management as per the 5G requirements. This is a platform which will be
enabling the operator to define 5G in terms of “Large Scale Convergence” and
application defined network.
ONAP is a crucial platform to facilitate it, ONAP is kind of platform to provide necessary
harmonization and unification required for emerging ecosystem and VNF based
infrastructure management and interoperation.

Whitepaper
As VNF going to be at the core for LSC “large scale convergence” and also going to
create a broad ecosystem from various classes of vendors small as well as large.
ONAP provide a standardized approach and a kind of incubatory for the development,
deployment and management of VNF lifecycle.
3GPP North Bound API

For better harmonization and standardization of service provisioning and control, 3gpp
has taken the much awaited step to work for north bound APIs.
A Northbound API is an interface between an Application Server (either in a mobile

operator’s network or external to it - operated by a third party) and the 3GPP system via
specified Functions in a mobile operator’s network.
As ONAP is facilitation for south bound activities 3GPP has come up with its plan to
provide north bound abstraction for service creation and management.
These efforts from 3GPP have far seeking impact on 5G to make it application defined
network. In words of 3GPP
“To realize standardized integration of services with diverse service providers,

northbound APIs provide for interaction at the application layer. This makes it possible
for mobile network operators to offer a wide range of services beyond prevalent
teleservices - voice calls, SMS and data service. Those services can be exposed within

Whitepaper
the operator network or to third parties in other networks. The figure below is a simple
model to illustrate how the Common Framework will develop as the study progresses.
The blue lines are defined by for all services accessed by northbound APIs – a common
framework. The red lines are specific interfaces to deliver a particular service.”
Common API Framework will focus on architectural aspects such as registration,

discovery and identity management that generally apply to all services. Common API
Framework Functions could be achieved uniformly for such capabilities as Service API
discovery, monitoring and charging. TR 23.722 provides the 3GPP study work for
common API Framework (CAPIF).
Specific service API support the specific needs of individual vertical service offerings
as well. For example, work on Broadcast interfaces has benefited from the participation
of 3GPP member organizations actively providing broadcasting services. Similarly, MTC
–related service exposure is coordinated directly with OneM2M and involves a wide
range of other participants.
In Release 14, the “eMBMS Delivery of Media and TV Services” feature provides
broadcasters with the ability to directly integrate their services with mobile network
operators over standardized interfaces to the 3GPP system. In Release 15, to
correspond with OneM2M release 2, 3GPP will include functionality to directly expose
Cellular IoT and MTC capabilities via northbound APIs.

Whitepaper
3GPP currently focusses significant resources on developing 5G standards. 5G aims to
provide distinctive performance and capabilities to meet the needs of specific services.
This will intensify the existing focus on integration with service providers in different
service domains (often called ‘vertical industries.’) One aspect of this may be a
broadening range of northbound APIs designed to expose the capabilities and
resources of 3GPP operator’s networks and the broad range of devices communicating
over them.
There exists lots of scope to set large scale abstractions by incorporating 3GPP north
bound API standardization with ONAP modular approach. This will be a beneficial stuff
for service providers, operators and vendors harmonization, and making a much hyped
5G expectation a reality.
MEC-Mobile Edge Computing

MEC, Mobile Edge computing, is the kingpin of ‘Large scale convergence’. That is
where the essence lies for LSC – Large Scale Convergence. This actually embarks
upon the need for the convergence at the access network. This convergence not only
going to cater multiple technologies but various aspects of application demands, those
are unique to each application. We refer to such demand as magical dimensions, like
for example, how much latency is enough to support the most stringent real time
application? What is the least interruption time to maintain the service integrity for most
consistent application during transfer of end user from one point of connect to other
point of connect, to access the serving network, or during the fault recovery from
transient faults with in the network itself.
These could be some of the citation for the requirements for the highly available
network. These magical dimensions i.e. networks which are so highly available that the
application is completely transparent of their internal behavior for environmental
changes like, mobility, fault & recovery.

Whitepaper
This LSC will be contingent upon Mobile edge computing i.e. MEC in short. This is
because of the ‘large scale’ requirements , which need to be catered in flexible,
scaleable and well defined way and that is also the way the MEC itself will be defined.
Therefore both are mutually inclusive things and also most of the application delivery
and operational logic will move to the edge.
Application Defined Networking - magical dimensions

When we say, that networks, which are so highly available that the application is
completely transparent of their internal behavior for environmental changes like,
mobility, fault & recovery etc. but only caring for the dimensions of applicability, we also
see the feasibility.
We know that even currently available networks provide very high availability and the
consistency of the service is maintained during hand off, connection failure & recovery,
reselection of access points etc. There are quite procedural executions to maintain such
availability with fair transparency to the application.
The magical networks paradigm is to make such lengthy procedural execution to almost
disappear or reduce them to the negligibility of computation.
And this is very much feasible if your latency of access is coming down and down and
also with some of architectural evolution. The core of the network, where the context of
the application requirement for the delivery of services is retained, is dissolving to totally
flat architecture with all-IP paradigm. There are no rigid or strict architectural

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requirements in terms of core network architecture as the NFV and cloud is blurring the
boundaries of computational requirement of network specific functionalities.
There are no exaggerations in these magical dimensions, as 3GPP setting certain KPI
in evolving next gen architecture, like 0 ms interruption time in case of mobility or fault
recovery. Radio latency is 1 ms and for URLLC specifics, lot of front end
computation/procedural stuff are being distributed or minimized.
That means networks are such that the end users are able to access service with
minimum set up time due to less procedural computation and very low latency. The
mobility is such that the procedural executions are negligible to provide the hands off
but rather like a fresh connection from one point of connect to other point of connect so
fast and consistent that the magic has occurred below the line completely transparent
for the things above the line.ONAP Amsterdam release provides a blueprint for Volte
application showcasing MEC.
The New Radio
NR going to be the 5G radio standard. NR is and will be in continuity for incorporating

new requirements and upcoming features, for that 3GPP decided 5G radio to be
forward compatible. We interpret it to incorporate new dimensions for taking it forward to
application defined.

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Higher Frequency Spectrum – mmWave

5G is about 10-20 Gbps peak data rates and to achieve this, wider channel bandwidths
are required. That’s where the focus comes to higher frequency spectrum in the range
above 6 GHz. In the US, the FCC is making mmWave spectrum available at 28 GHz
and 39 GHz. At these higher frequencies, operators could see 400 MHz, 800 MHz, or
up to 1 GHz of additional bandwidth for their networks. In LTE networks current days,
operator has just over a 100 MHz of aggregate channel bandwidth in their network.

Whitepaper
Signals at higher frequencies have their own behavioral impacts on the design and
developments of radio system. Higher frequencies are more likely to attenuate at
distance i.e. more propagation loss, less diffraction therefore low penetration i.e. low
affinity for multipath. Massive MIMO is the technique with massive antenna and LoS
beamforming are the most viable solutions, which requires antennas in ranges of
hundreds at base station side, will be the key. These antennas will be quite small by
today’s standards. They will use analog beamforming that is more akin to the “smart
antennas” of the 1990’s rather than the digital MIMO ubiquitous to LTE.
Massive MIMO Beamforming

One revolutionary change is in the use of massive multiple- input / multiple-output
(MIMO) antenna schemes, enabling spatial multiplexing and maximizing the reuse of
scarce bandwidth. Massive MIMO beamforming brings the major shift from the
traditional point-to-multipoint paradigm to a real-time adaptive point-to-point link, with
the base station tracking the user and steering its signal to them. Improved antenna
gain overcomes path loss, enabling higher data rates per hertz.
All of this drives new requirements for the development and implementation of massive
MIMO technology within the 5G ecosystem. This has implications for the tools required
to simulate, design and test highly complex systems containing tens or hundreds of
antennas and the associated communication pathways.

Whitepaper
Massive MIMO Beamforming Design and Verification Challenges

In contrast, for a mobile system, a moving user will be tracked and served by a beam
from a particular base station until that beam is blocked and service is interrupted.
Communication will be reinstated from a beam transmitted from another antenna that
has an unobstructed path. These beam handovers will be more infrequent than the fast
beam scanning implemented in a fixed wireless system.
Massive MIMO is about multi-channel beam forming techniques e.g. a network-side

(base-station) spatial multiplexing technique designed to improve data rates per user. A
much needed technical approach to address the high density areas for fair and
ubiquitous data rate distribution.
MIMO designs will be in the range of hundreds of antennas, beamforming in azimuth

and elevation i.e. 3D beamforming, and so there is number of channels requirements for
measurements, 2D antenna pattern measurements will not work to validate overall
system performance.
TM9 Functionality
For the massive MIMO, the devices and the networks both must be compatible for TM9
transmission mode. It leverages advanced beamforming schemes between the network
equipment and the mobile device to raise network spectral efficiency and customer
speeds.
Challenges Ahead
There are various areas of challenges in respect to 5G, whether it be standardization,
development or deployment. There need to be a large scale coordination to various
functionaries, as 5G is being tackled with multiple approaches and in a fragmented

Whitepaper
environment. 5G functionaries in process has to be of continuity, like continuous
improvement, continuous integration, continuous optimization etc. etc.
Although 3GPP has officially announced the standardization of NSA mode NR for 5G
beginning but in actuality it a subsequent evolution of 3GPP road map and 5G in its
esoteric form has to take a long way. Therefore 3GPP has many challenges ahead too,
wide scope and all-encompassing goals for 5G has resulted in a hype cycle that has led
to significant increase in proposals for standardization. It is not feasible to evaluate such
a large number of technology proposals and come up with standard specifications in a
timeframe to start 5G deployments by 2020.
These proposals aim to change many facets of wireless stack functionality that were
standardized as part of the 4G releases. The industry is divided and rightly questioning
undoing functionality that is working well in 4G given the unprecedented success of 4G
LTE. Prolonged debates to build consensus within standard working bodies further add
to the delay. Therefore 5G will go along with 4G support and take its due time to that
could be expected to have real start from the year 2020 itself and gaining the maturity
by 2025
To complicate matters further, operators are anxious to deploy 5G sooner, particularly

for high capacity fixed wireless access links to substitute the expensive last mile fiber
access or fill the time to market gap for these links. The 2018 winter Olympics in
PyeongChang, Korea and 2020 summer Olympics in Tokyo are being viewed as a
platform to showcase 5G network and use cases to stimulate demand. All these factors
are resulting in significant uncertainty and challenges within the ecosystem.
Conclusive Remark
A good amount of debate is actively happening within the industry on viable use cases.
Fixed wireless access, smart cities, augmented reality/virtual reality applications, and
autonomous cars are the leading use cases. Aside from the fixed wireless access,
commercial and regulatory concerns persist in the broad adoption of these use cases.
Although in early stage enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) use case is getting more
attention in order to solve for the fixed wireless access in the initial phase of the 5G
standardization. In order to open up new revenue streams, IOT and machine type
communications and network slicing will take prominent role. In the same line of
thinking many operators are pushing for inclusion of ultra-reliable low-latency in the

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early 5G standardization phase to accelerate integration of several vertical industries
such as energy and transportation markets.
5G is happening fast, there being testimonials for the same by end of 2017 and much is
being expected far early in 2018. Massive MIMO has been tested, NR has got
standardized, End to End 5G call also taken place and seamless roaming with network
slicing has been tested on test bed. 5G when happens, operators will have a short time
to get their networks and service platforms ready and upgraded. Operators and service
providers cannot afford to wait and watch and risk missing the market, network
upgrades and capacity enhancements will happen despite the uncertainty and
misaligned objectives within the ecosystem
For these reasons, operators have to build agile networks that are flexible, scalable and
extendable and there is a movement within the industry to come up with programmable
platforms that can be rapidly updated and enhanced to catch the wave of new services
revenue.
As vendors, including hardware vendors, are skeptical about the standard stabilization
on technology they are having ad hoc approaches to provide hardware based on
programmable FPGAs and SoCs, those are specifically designed to address evolving
5G market requirements. Early stage 5G developments, proof of concepts, test beds
and early commercialization trials are leveraging these technologies, ASICs are not
viable this early stage in the 5G standardization phase. The key value proposition of
such platforms is that these systems can be dynamically repurposed to support any
function and host evolving algorithmic implementations.
5G need a continuous coordination across the emerging ecosystem to set forth its
requirements, use cases scenario’s and coordinated work. 3GPP is working hard in
collaboration with various other organizations like 5GPPP, NGMN, ITU-R, WBA etc.

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References –
1. Millimeter wave as the future of 5G, Robert W. Heath Jr., PhD, PE. University of
Texas at Austin.
2. Document IEEE 802.11-16/35lrl by Richard Burbidge Intel Corporation.
3. October 13, 2015 GSA report: Evolution of Technology
4. ETSI whitepaper 11 – MEC A Key Technology Towards 5G
5. NGMN-5G E2E Architecture framework, v0.6.5
6. 5GPPP European 5G annual journal 2017
7. 3GPP TR 38.913 v0.3.0 (2016-03)
8. 3GPP TR 23.722 – Study of common API frame work of 3GPP North Bound APIs
9. 3GPP TS 26.347 MBMS API for TV broadcasting service logic
10. http://www.telecomtv.com/articles/5g/3gpp-takes-control-of-northbound-apis-for-5
g-enabled-vertical-services-15618/
11. ONAP architecture overview
https://www.onap.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/12/ONAP_CaseSolution
_Architecture_120817_FNL.pdf

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12. ONAP OOM Solution brief
https://www.onap.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2017/12/ONAP_CaseSolution
_OOM_1217.pdf
Author’s info
Saurabh Verma, is having vast industry experience in telecom and networking space,
he started his career from Govt of India telecom R&D premier organization, and worked
across various MNCs for development of switches and base stations systems, his
recent focus being with telecom network solutions on 4G and 5G specific technologies.
Also his major interest area being solutions around WiFi and Cellular integrations, and
upcoming convergence in 5G networks with significant focus on MEC or Multi Access
edge computing.
Disclaimer - The contents and figures expressed here for standards or publically
exposed technologies are duly referenced or taken from referenced documents. We
intently have not copied or resembled in our writing for expressing our innovative ideas,
either in text or in figures. The ideas expressed here are purely original in text and
figures. The text used to explain the open technological concepts and figures to explain
that are only for explanatory purpose and no intension of commercialization or use for
advantage. This is an expression of about pure conceptualization of ideas and claims or
pertain no authorization about standards or industry views to be claimed for.
© Copyright - This is a commercial version of the document, all the copyright stand
for “Fundarc Communication (xgnlab)”, any form of replication or reoccurrences of the
ideas or thoughts expressed in this document would be directly taken as infringement
with rights and interference with property.

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Expert View
Discussion with Industry Expert

Mr. Oscar Bexell.

Oscar describe himself as “Wireless and IP
networking specialist/strategist/evangelist” with
a passion for understanding solutions, both
technically and commercially
Oscar has many years of experience from
working with Wi-Fi, LTE/4G, Fixed Wireless
Access and many other wireless and IP based
technologies in various roles (business analyst,
technical instructor, HW/SW developer, field engineer, technical sales, solution
architect etc.).
His major involvement being with ericsson and currently he is working As IoT Solution

Architect with Atea Sverige AB.

You may find him at Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/oscar-bexell-9462922/
Interview
Q. 5G still seems to be dimensionless, where do you see Wi-Fi fitting with 5G?
A. Residential and for enterprises (how long depends on how well 11ax plays out). In the
longer run, and with new types of gadgets coming in, I don't think anything LBT/CS fits the
bill. CBRS will take off in the US and take the indoor enterprise space. In China the MNOs
have been doing this with small cells for quite some time. In other countries there will be
other approaches. Different markets will also take longer/shorter time to adopt. For many
Wi-Fi system integrators and vendors, there will be market shares to take with CBRS.
Q. Wi-Fi in current wireless access technology space is on hype or settled, why?

Expert View
A. I only follow them from a distance. I like the NGH initiative. I think they should get into
CBRS+4G/5G. That's where the MSOs and many service providers will be able to take
footprints over time. Build ecosystem and drive standardization/harmonization.
Q.How relevant Wi-Fi Alliance has been so far, and what you think about its future
role should be?
A.It's probably the main factor behind the success of Wi-Fi. I see their work as critical, both
for new standards, but maybe even more for driving interoperability work and
harmonization of frequencies. They should keep on doing exactly this, but I also think they
should drive CBRS spectrum harmonization in more markets and the ecosystems around
this. That is the future for enterprise/venue in-building networks.
Q. Wi-Fi access would be catching what kind of segments of IOT?
A.I t's already used a lot, especially in in-home deployments and as backhaul to many
Bluetooth/Zigbee/Z-wave/gateway applications. It will play a very big role in the coming
years as it's already present in most environments. I think mainly as backhaul. I'm also
looking forward to see how 802.11ah takes off. I see that mainly as an in-home competitor
to Bluetooth 5.0 and Zigbee.
Q.Do you feel for any need of collaboration or association for Wi-Fi ecosystem
development with a fresh view (may be like use case basis/software
defined/cloud based)?
A. N/A

News
Intel has a market capitalization of about
$240 billion. Should the deal seem likely to
America’s security concerns
go ahead, Intel might intervene and launch
landed on Broadcom and its own takeover bid for Broadcom to
qualcomm multi billion dollar eliminate any competitive threat and create
deal. an even bigger semiconductor giant, reports
Light Reading the WSJ, citing people close to the matter.
“The proposed takeover of Qualcomm by

the Purchaser [Broadcom] is prohibited, and No Restriction over Promotional
any substantially equivalent merger, Offers by Telecom Operators,
acquisition, or takeover, whether effected TRAI
directly or indirectly, is also prohibited," the Hindustan Times
White House said in a statement Monday
12 Feb 2018. N. Delhi, TRAI, Telecom Regulatory
Authority of India, on its sixty third
The White House imposition shortly follows amendment order for telecom tariff – made
the announcement of a CFIUS national public on 16 Feb 2018, said “The authority
security review of the proposed buyout. is of the view that no restrictions need to be
This appears to represent the end of imposed on number of promotional offer
that can be simultaneously launched and
Broadcom's multi-billion ($117 b) dollar bid
time lag between same or similar
to buy Qualcomm, promotional offer in a licensed service area.
Restrictions may not be in interest of
consumers apart from possibly hindering
Intel may bid for Broadcom WSJ
competition.”
report says
WSJ TRAI added “There is no further need to
alter the current minimal definition of the
As Trump administration has stamied the
promotional offers. Also there is no need to
qualcomm acquisition by Broadcom due to
further restrict the time period of
security concerns and chinese factor. The
promotional offer from the current 90
other side of story is growing that Intel is
days”
eyeing for Broadcom.
As Reliance jio’s free offers has put the
Intel wants antitrust authorities to scupper
industry in turmoil and brought unrest
Broadcom's bid for Qualcomm because it is
among other players like Idea cellular and
concerned the resulting player would pose
Bharti telecom and they had moved TDSAT
a challenge to its own business.
against TRAI and Reliance jio.

News
TRAI has made it clear through the
amendment that unless until the offers AT&T on high plan for 5G by end
provided by the operators are of 2018
non-predatory , non-discriminatory and Eweek news
fully transparent, there is no restriction AT&T announced the initial 5G service
likely to be imposed. areas on Feb. 21, as the
telecommunications giant begins its
In case tariff are found to be predatory , build-out of its latest high-speed mobile
There is a clause for penalty of Rs 50 lakhs network.
per tariff plan per licensed service area.
"After significantly contributing to the first
TRAI will examine the operators with about phase of 5G standards, conducting
30% share in the market for their tariff multi-city trials, and literally transforming
plans. our network for the future, we're planning
to be the first carrier to deliver
standards-based mobile 5G – and do it
Govt of India to provide its 5G much sooner than most people thought
roadmap by Jun 2018, Telecom possible," Igal Elbaz, the senior vice
president of wireless network architecture
Secretary. and design for AT&T, said in a statement.
PTI News "Our mobile 5G firsts will put our customers
in the middle of it all."
N.Delhi, Telecom Secretary Aruna
Sundararajan said at an Assocham event AT&T has announced that Dallas, Atlanta
held on 16 Feb 2018, “The telecom ministry and Waco, Texas will be the first cities to
has set up a high-level committee to work gain access to its 5G wireless service by the
on 5G roadmap so that India gets access to end of 2018 and that it will announce nine
the next generation technology when it is more cities in the coming months.
available for commercial roll-out globally.”
AT&T's
initial mobile 5G deployments will be based
"In the 5G we are looking to do lot of pilots. on 3GPP (3rd Generation Partner Project)
So when 5G hits India will be at leading standards and operate over mmWave
edge of technology as well as used cases," spectrum, according to the company.
She said “By June this year, I hope we will To support the development of the
be able to unveil India's 5G roadmap," Also company's 5G strategy and network, AT&T
she added "Just as last 18-24 months have is opening a new 5G lab in Austin, Texas,
been period of rapid and radical changes. In where it will conduct stress tests using
the next 12 months we will see large mobile 5G network equipment and
number of these capabilities being built in devices from a range of vendors before the
India. In the coming months we will begin devices are released to customers. This lab
to see actual roll out of M2M," is also equipped with an outdoor 5G

News
testbed to evaluate a variety of 5G using licensed spectrum. The test on
applications and real-world use cases. Verizon’s millimeter wave spectrum—using
Nokia 5G network technology on a 5G NR
prototype device provided by
Major mobile carriers in US find Qualcomm—was conducted to help
busy with their 5G plans in 2018. prepare Verizon’s network for widespread
Eweek news implementation of commercial 5G mobile
services for consumers and enterprises.
In January, T-Mobile announced it was
working with Nokia and Intel on tests of Sprint, meanwhile, is working to use parts
commercial 5G services to see how of the 2.5 GHz radio spectrum to launch its
millimeter wave radio signals operating at first 5G mobile network in the first half of
28 GHz will behave in an urban setting, how 2019, using the High Performance User
they will interact with LTE systems and how Equipment (HPUE) project it began
they can be integrated with existing experimenting with in 2017. Sprint is also
networks. T-Mobile has said it expects to deploying massive MIMO radios using 2.5
deploy its nation-wide mobile 5G network GHz in 2018, which will be software
by 2020. upgradeable to 5G as soon the technology
becomes available, according to a Sprint
Verizon began its own commercial 5G spokeswoman. Sprint is also working with
trials in mid-2017 in 11 U.S. cities, including Qualcomm and device manufacturers to
Ann Arbor, Mich., Atlanta, Ga.; develop 5G devices for use with the service
Bernardsville, N.J., Brockton, Mass., Dallas, provider’s 2.5 GHz spectrum.
Denver, Houston, Sacramento, Calif.,
Seattle, and Washington, D.C. The trials 5G is expected to offer as much as 50 times
included up to 500 residential and business the throughput of current 4G LTE and
customers. Verizon has been conducting latency that will drop into the single
initial 5G tests since it began early milliseconds. It's also expected to play a
laboratory work and field trials in the fall of significant role in the rapidly growing
2016. Internet of things (IoT) enabling rapid
growth of the number of connected devices
Earlier in February, Verizon conducted a as well as the data volumes from these
successful over-the-air call on a devices.
3GPP-compliant 5G New Radio (NR) system
setup at the former’s network experience
centre in Manesar, Gurgaon.
Airtel pushing ahead to win the
race of advance technology (5G) Abhay Savargaonkar, director – networks at
adapter in India. Bharti Airtel, said the test is small but a
significant step in its journey towards the
ETT news,
next generation 5G mobile networks, which
Bharti Airtel and Chinese telecom gear could offer data speed up to 100 times
maker Huawei have successfully conducted faster than current 4G networks.
India’s first 5G network trial under a test

News
During the test trial, a user throughput of New York, Verizon is the first network
more than 3 GBPS was achieved using the provider to conduct an over-the-air call on a
setup. This is the highest measured 3GPP-compliant 5G New Radio (NR) system
throughput for a mobile network in 3.5 GHz using licensed spectrum. This successful test
band with 100 MHz bandwidth and on Verizon's millimeter wave spectrum –
end-to-end network latency of using Nokia 5G network technology on a 5G
approximately 1 msec. The setup included NR prototype device provided by
5G RAN operating on 3.5 GHz band, 5G Core Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary
and 50GE Network Slicing router. of Qualcomm Incorporated – was an
important milestone on the road to
Emmanuel Coelho Alves, director, wireless preparing Verizon's network for widespread
marketing, at Huawei, said the show with implementation of commercial 5G mobile
Bharti Airtel demonstrated the services for consumers and enterprises. The
performance capability of 5G in 3.5 GHz test was conducted this month at Nokia's
band. “We shall also continue to work with facility in Murray Hill, NJ and follows prior
vertical industry players to develop wider interoperability testing between Nokia and
ecosystem use cases beyond enhanced Qualcomm Technologies. The 5G NR
mobile broadband,” he said in a statement. standard was approved by the 3GPP in
December 2017.
Airtel’s efforts around 5G technology isn’t
"With this first 3GPP NR standards-based
limited to its collaboration with telecom
connection, Verizon continues to lead the
gear vendors such as Ericsson and Nokia.
development of 5G technology," said Ed
Chan, senior vice president and chief
It recently entered into a strategic alliance
technology architect, Corporate Network &
with South Korean firm SK Telecom to
Technology, Verizon. "By partnering with
leverage the latter’s expertise to build
Nokia and Qualcomm to combine 5G
advanced telecom network and together
technology with our deep millimeter wave
work in developing 5G technology, network
spectrum, we're well on the way to being
functions virtualisation (NFV),
the first to usher in the next era of wireless
software-defined networking (SDN) and
communications for customers.
Internet of Things.
The test was completed over Nokia's
CloudRAN solution, which is comprised of
Successful over-the-air 5G call
the Nokia AirScale baseband and radio,
test completed on Verizon's AirFrame server, and AirScale Cloud RAN
millimeter wave spectrum running 5G NR 3GPP-compliant software.
verizon media

News
"Nokia's 3GPP-compliant high-capacity 5G beginning in 2019," said Joe Glynn, vice
solution supports pioneering operators like president of business development,
Verizon in leveraging their assets to make a Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "The
true difference with 5G for their successful completion of
customers," said Marc Rouanne, president standard-compliant 5G NR millimeter wave
of Mobile Networks, Nokia. "Using the testing with leading mobile industry
successful interoperability testing we innovators such as Nokia and Verizon prove
conducted with Qualcomm as a basis, we're that we are well on the path to making this
now applying our standard-compliant 5G a reality."
technology in this trial with Verizon to push
Verizon's deployment of 5G technology
the commercialization of 5G."
over millimeter wave spectrum – beginning
The test utilized Qualcomm Technologies' in 2018 – will provide massive bandwidth,
cutting-edge 5G NR millimeter wave ultra-high speed and single digit latency for
prototype device, which includes an emerging fixed and mobile use cases. As 5G
optimized millimeter wave RF front-end continues to evolve, and as new use cases
design in a smartphone form factor. are developed and deployed, Verizon will
be well positioned to deliver the capabilities
"Qualcomm Technologies is committed to
those use cases call for to become a
supporting the launch of standard-based
commercially viable solution.
commercial 5G networks and products

News
T-mobile will use 5G equipments

Verizon full focus on Fixed 5G in
2018 from ericsson and nokia
Light Reading Telecomlead
Verizon Communications Inc. is gearing up T-Mobile has selected Ericsson and Nokia to
set up 5G network in the 600MHz and
to start providing a fixed wireless
28GHz mmWave spectrum in the United
alternative to fiber that delivers download
States.
speeds of 600 Mbit/s to 1.4 Gbit/s at a
distance of 1,000 feet. Verizon will deploy Engineers at T-Mobile, the third largest
pre-standard 28GHz millimeter wave 5G wireless operator, will start building the 5G
commercial radio network gear from network during the second quarter of 2018,
Ericsson AB -- using Verizon's 5GTF aiming for completion in 2020.
specification -- and the 5G core network in
T-Mobile said both AT&T and Verizon focus
select markets in the second half of 2018.
on 5G hotspots in urban areas and their 5G
Samsung Corp. is providing fixed 5G gear for
may not work on customers’ smartphones.
Verizon as well. Wireless customers may need a router to
access 5G from Verizon and AT&T.
Verizon says it will deploy three to five
markets by the end of 2018, but the only
T-Mobile plans to build 5G network in 30
market named so far is Sacramento, Calif. cities this year, and customers in New York,
Verizon has been testing its fixed system in Los Angeles, Dallas and Las Vegas will be
11 markets, in trials that started in April. first to experience it, when the first 5G
Verizon is using its home-grown spec for smartphones launch early next year.
the initial 5G markets but expects to move
to the standard specification for mobile John Legere, president and CEO at
T-Mobile. “While the Duopoly focus on
applications in the 2020 timeframe. It will
bragging rights, we focus on customers.
start testing the 3GPP 5G NR specification T-Mobile has massively bigger plans for a
next year with Qualcomm Inc. truly transformative 5G experience on your

News
smartphone nationwide. We’re playing the Nokia will advance T-Mobile’s existing 4G
long game … the only game that matters.” LTE network, providing radio access
network (RAN) support for 4G and 5G
Besides deploying 5G-ready equipment subscribers.
today and lighting up 5G in 600 MHz
spectrum, T-Mobile plans to begin building Interestingly, both Huawei and ZTE, two
out 5G on millimeter wave spectrum this China-based telecom equipment suppliers
year. , T-Mobile will deploy 25,000 small did not get any 5G deal in the U.S. Samsung
cells to light up LAA (Licensed Assisted also did not received the 5G equipment
Access), technology, paving the way for 5G. deal from T-Mobile.
Ericsson is providing 5G radio access Sprint, one of the rivals of T-Mobile,

products — for 600 MHz and selected Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung for
millimeter-wave (mmWave) in 28 GHz and building 5G network in select U.S. markets
39 GHz. in the first half of 2019.
Ericsson is supporting T-Mobile for building Sprint’s engineers will deploy Massive
5G in New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas MIMO radios, increasing network capacity
this year utilizing 5G New Radio (NR) radios for mobile phone users. Sprint’s first
and baseband from Ericsson’s 5G Platform. 5G-ready Massive MIMO cell sites are
capable of delivering up to 10 times the
Nokia will deploy 5G RAN using both capacity of current LTE systems,
600MHz and 28GHz mmWave AirScale significantly increasing data speeds for
solutions for delivering multi-gigabit speeds more customers in high-traffic locations.
and ultra-low latency in populated areas,
including Dallas by the end of this year.

News
2.8Gbps downlink throughput and sub-5ms

latency.
BT & Huawei came together for
5G Development and trial
BT and Huawei showcased the first 5G
Telecomlead
UL/DL decoupling proof-of-concept live in
BT Group and Huawei signed an agreement London at Huawei’s Global Broadband
for the development and live trials of 5G Forum. This technology improves C-band
New Radio (NR), core network technology, coverage and implements co-site
and 5G customer premises equipment co-coverage deployment of C-band and 1.8
(CPEs). GHz band.
Howard Watson, CTIO of BT Group, said: This solves the issue of limited uplink
“The EE network is already the UK leader coverage on higher frequency bands during
for speed and coverage, and with the the initial deployment of 5G networks, and
weight of BT’s R&D and partnerships we can greatly reduces operators’ requirements for
ensure that leadership continues with the new sites during 5G network construction.
introduction a world class 5G experience.”
BT group company EE and Huawei launched
BT and Huawei started work on 5G research the UK’s first 4G/LTE network in 2012. EE’s
and development in 2016. In November LTE-advanced and LTE-advanced-Pro
2017, they completed UK’s first 5G network achieved a peak rate of 970Mbps
end-to-end lab testing, delivering consistent

News
on EE’s network at Wembley Stadium with a bulk disbursements, bill payments and
Huawei Mate 10-pro handset. bank-to-wallet transactions have been the
main drivers. In 2017, nearly 25 percent of
incoming funds were digital, compared to
Mobile money market grown by
nearly 12 percent in 2012.
25% to 690 MN, as per GSMA
Telecomlead
Accelerated growth of bank-to-wallet

interoperability, growing adoption of
smartphones, the proliferation of fintech
companies, and the digitisation of new
sectors of the economy are the latest
trends in mobile money market in 2017.
GSMA said the growth of the mobile money

industry was led by regions other than
Africa. South Asia achieved 47 percent
growth — becoming the fastest-growing
region in terms of registered accounts and
represents 34 percent of mobile money
registered accounts globally.
Mobile money, which is available in 75

percent of low- and lower-middle-income
countries, has become the leading payment
platform for a digital economy in many
emerging markets.
A number of mobile money services are

seeing the proportion of their customer
base regularly using their service increase
to over 50 percent, especially where
providers have a strong distribution
network.
Airtel wants to get out of telecom
More funds are entering and leaving the towers, committed to Africa
mobile money ecosystem in digital form; Reuters

News
Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal said OOKLA rated Airtel 4G faster in
telecom operator is exploring merger and India, boosted its TVC to dig
sale options for its mobile towers
against Reliance jio.
businesses and strengthen focus on
connectivity business in Africa.
ETT News
Airtel, the world’s No.3 Bharti Airtel on Friday rolled out a new
mobile operator by campaign “Sab Kuch Try Karo, Fir Sahi
subscribers, also wants to Chuno” aimed at calling out customers to
float a minority stake in its try all networks and then decide for
African operations and sees themselves which one is the best.
the London Stock Exchange as
a potentially attractive venue. The campaign is based on Airtel being rated
as the fastest mobile network in India by
Mittal, briefing reporters at Ookla for the third time in a row. The
the Mobile World Congress in company has also released a TVC which
Barcelona on Wednesday, seems to be taking a dig at the incumbent
backed the lead set by telcos operators for proclaiming to be the fastest
in the United States, now networks.
being followed in Europe, for
specialists to roll up and run Interestingly, the TVC shows a man
mobile tower assets. narrating his experience of switching from
an Airtel network to another network and
returning to Airtel after experiencing the
“Our position is very clear: other network. The company seems to be
towers are steel and concrete. calling out customers that switched to other
They are not the domain of networks, reassuring them that Airtel is the
mobile companies,” said the fastest network in India.
60-year-old Mittal, whose
family fortune Forbes As stated by Airtel, Ookla’s tests determine
Magazine puts at $8.8 billion. an operator’s Speed Score, which uses a
modified trimean to demonstrate the
download and upload speeds that are
available across a provider’s network.
“This campaign aims to build an open and

honest conversation with customers and
re-affirm Airtel’s confidence in its network.

News
During our consumer work, we discovered
that several customers who had moved
from Airtel to other networks are now
coming back as they were convinced that
Airtel is the best. This is a powerful insight,”
said Rajiv Mathrani, Chief Brand & Online
Officer, Bharti Airtel.
“The strength of Airtel’s network has been

consistently recognized by the world’s
leading speedtest app. This is also a
reflection of the massive investments in
new technology and advanced networks we
have made over the past couple of years,”
he added.

Tutorials
LTE Introduction
In Nov. 2004, 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) began a project to define the
Long-Term Evolution (LTE) of Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) cellular
technology
With the following prime objectives

❖ Higher performance (Latency, Speed, QoS etc)
❖ Spectrum efficiency (more bits per hertz, reusability)
❖ Backwards compatible (Evolution of GSM/UMTS)
❖ Wide applications (data network)
LTE was first proposed by NTT DoCoMo of Japan in 2004, and studies on the new standard
officially commenced in 2005.
The LTE standard was finalized in December 2008, and the first publicly available LTE service
was launched by TeliaSonera in Oslo and Stockholm on December 14, 2009 as a data
connection with a USB modem.
Samsung Galaxy Indulge being the world’s first LTE smartphone starting on February 10, 2011.
LTE grown at fastest pace ever any 3GPP technology.
Initially, CDMA operators planned to upgrade to rival standards called UMB and WiMAX.
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+1

Tutorials
But all the major CDMA operators (such as Verizon, Sprint and MetroPCS in the United States,
Bell and Telus in Canada, au by KDDI in Japan, SK Telecom in South Korea and China
Telecom/China Unicom in China) have announced that they intend to migrate to LTE after all.
The evolution of LTE is LTE Advanced, which was standardized in March 2011.
LTE Advance fit within the criteria of ITU-T 4G networks.
What is LTE
● LTE is a standard for wireless data communications technology and an evolution of the
GSM/UMTS standards.
● LTE uses many of the advance techniques from HSPA network like adaptive
modulation, MIMO, and Harq.
● OFDM technique was introduced in 3GPP world through LTE.
● It was paradigm shift, in network architecture, to an IP-based system with significantly
reduced transfer latency compared to the 3G architecture.
● LTE separated the control plane from data plane, thanks to all IP Paradigm.
● The goal of LTE was to increase the capacity and speed of wireless data networks using
new DSP ( Simple digital signal processing techniques) and modulations scheme.
● The LTE wireless interface is incompatible with 2G and 3G networks, so that it must be
operated on a separate wireless spectrum.
● LTE employs Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) for downlink
data transmission and Single Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) for uplink transmission
● SC-FDMA is a new single carrier multiple access technique which has similar structure
and performance to OFDMA
● A salient advantage of SC-FDMA over OFDM is the low Peak to Average Power (PAP)
ratio : Increasing battery life.
LTE System Architecture
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+2

Tutorials
EPS
In the 3GPP mobile network evolution path, 4G networks have come across significant network
architecture overhauling as compared to the change from 2G to 2.5G and 3G. This change is
referred to as system architecture evolution (SAE) with a paradigm of all IP network concepts,
and in LTE networks finally described as EPS (evolved packet system), which comprises evolved
packet core (EPC) and EUTRAN.
EUTRAN
EUTRAN comprises eNodeBs, and provides UEs (user Equipment’s)--radio access to a mobile
core network, i.e. EPC. The complete system is also visualized as access stratum (AS) and
non-access stratum (NAS) where EUTRAN covers AS part of the system. This terminology is very
useful while discriminating the signaling over the radio network and core network.
For access to the core network, UE makes RRC connections with eNodeB as part of AS signaling,
which subsequently connects to MME as part of the NAS signaling connection with a mobile
core. UE is allocated a temporary identity at each connection, like C-RNTI and S-TMSI
respectively, for identification at the respective reference point.
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+3

Tutorials
LTE Packet Core

EPC
EPC comprises mainly MME and SGW/PGW and provides the UE connectivity to the external
world. It authenticates the UE for network access, and keeps the registration and location track
of registered UEs. For the data connection, EPC maintains the context for connection, sets up
the end-to-end bearer connectivity, applies the necessary security measures, and enforces the
policy per the policy and charging control architecture. The figure below depicts the end-to-end
bearer connectivity for UE.
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+4

Tutorials
The figure below depicts the functionality at access stratum and non-access stratum distributed
to individual nodes.
Network Registration
RRC connection
In LTE, the RRC connection has two states idle and connected; at EPC they are also referred to
in the connection management state as ECM_idle and ECM_connected. The UE first makes an
RRC connection to register with the network, and the network maintains the UE as
EMM_registered or EMM_unregistered mobility management states. To remain registered with
the network, the UE shall have to periodically update its location with the network. Based on
the RRC connection states, UE activities are defined.
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+5

Tutorials
This state transitions diagram shows the coordination of connection management and mobility
management states in EUTRAN.
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+6

Tutorials
LTE Radio Access

EUTRA
EUTRA refers to radio connectivity of the UE to eNodeB. Every UE makes an RRC connection to
eNodeB for accessing the radio network. For each RRC connection, the UE is allocated with
SRBs for setting the signaling with the core network, either for registration or for data
connection, and accordingly provided DRBs.
Each of the SRBs and DRBs are mapped to different logical channels provided by the lower
layers of the LTE protocol.
LTE Packet Construct
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+7

Tutorials
LTE Identifiers at various ref points
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+8

Tutorials
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+9

Tutorials
LTE Frame Structure
Radio resources are allocated as physical resource blocks (PRBs). PRBs are handled by a
scheduling function at the 3GPP base station: Evolved Node B (eNodeB).
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+10

Tutorials
Bandwidth Flexibility
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+11

Tutorials
LTE Stack
Cell Selection/Re-selection
The Figure shows one possible scenario in a real network.
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+12

Tutorials
Only when specific criteria are fulfilled is the UE allowed to camp

on that cell
Assume that the UE belongs to network operator 1. There are two other carriers also operating
an LTE network but of course at different frequencies. The terminal receives all base stations
but at different power levels. Based on the above definition the UE will select the strong cell for
each carrier . Using this the UE will start with network operator 3 and figure out after decoding
the SIB Type 1 that the PLMN saved on the USIM does not match to the transmitted one. From
this information it will stop with its attempt and proceed to the next strongest signal, which is
operator 2 . Now the PLMN does not correspond so the UE will continue with signal 3 – and the
PLMN will match. The UE continues to use the information in SIB Type 1 and Type 2 to compute
the cell selection criteria. In this example, the parameters transferred and belonging to eNB1 do
not fulfill the selection criteria, where the UE will move along with demodulating and decoding
the information provided by eNB2. Selection criteria is fulfilled and the UE starts camping on
this cell.
SIB is System information block send by the network with system specific informations, an
example of SIB1 is
Once UE select or re-select a cell it camps on it and initiate initial access to start the services.
End of Tutorial
2018 Q1 xgnlab 85+13

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xgnlab

Technological Magazine for Next Gen Telecom & Networks

2018 Q1 xgnlab page 1

We expect this magazine to benefit at maximum to professionals, students, researchers and

All the best and many thanks, enjoy reading.

2018 Q1 xgnlab page 2

We are open here for advertising and sponsorship.

You can write to us on mail at ​info@xgnlab.com

2018 Q1 xgnlab page 3

2018 Q1 xgnlab page 3+1

MWC 2018 (Feb 26 - Mar 3, 2018)

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+1

Also open RAN groups such as the xRAN

independent radio," said Santiago Tenorio,

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+2

Ericsson delivers Cat-M1 (LTE-M) and

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+3

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+4

Our thanks to all those who participated.

Over 25 companies participated in this

Project participants: GSMA, WBA, Cisco,

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+5

(Cellnex) and Brendan O’Brien (from Think

Making the vision a reality

This initiative represents somehow my

Looking forward for MWC 2019 and to take

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+6

Huawei robust network service solution troubleshooting is improved by over

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+7

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+8

Anritsu Shown its 5G Anritsu Customs Software Solutions helps

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+9

deliver an optimized Customer eXperience head-mounted VR displays in time for 5G’s

The test and measurement company’s Snapdragon 700

In addition, Anritsu’s NFV Closed Loop On-device AI supported by Artificial

Qualcomm snapdragon Spectra ISP, Kryo CPU, Hexagon Vector

Qualcomm Technologies’ 5G Module “The Snapdragon 700 Mobile Platform

With sampling expected in 2019, customers

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+10

GLOMO Awards at Best Mobile Service for the Connected Life:

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+11

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+12

The Green Mobile Award: Huawei for

Outstanding Mobile Contribution to the UN

Outstanding Contribution to the Mobile

2018 Q1 xgnlab 4+13

“Gigabit LTE is a specific configuration of

Emerging Ecosystem & Trends

2018 Q1 xgnlab page 16+2

2018 Q1 xgnlab page 16+3

What is 3.5GHz Citizens Broadband Radio

2018 Q1 xgnlab page 16+4

– ​Tom Wheeler, FCC chairman

Why is CBRS of so important?

However, today the wireless communication faces several challenges:

1. Cost of broadband spectrum is extremely high

2018 Q1 xgnlab page 16+5

Several examples of benefits are:

● Better Internet Access to users in urban and rural areas:

The 3.5 GHz band is an innovation multiple rounds of notice and

2018 Q1 xgnlab page 16+6

2018 Q1 xgnlab page 16+7

2018 Q1 xgnlab page 16+8

You can write to us on mail at info@xgnlab.com

– Tom Wheeler, FCC chairman

A. IEEE should continue to be the leading scientific and professional association

A. Develop more practical knowledge to solve real-world problems and use