With the aim of boosting adoption of 5G services, today, Ericsson that is a Swedish telecom technology provider announced its software driven 5G plug-ins. The plug-ins not only brings flexible 5G to existing networks, but also improves operator’s mobile broadband, fixed wireless and IoT services. It is believed by the company that in 2020 the 5G subscription uptake will commence and they say it will be faster than 4G.
The company said that the development of 5G is being driven by new use cases that will impact both consumers and industries. New applications and use cases anticipated for 5G include safe, self-driving cars, remote controlled robots, haptic feedback-enabled drones and fixed wireless access – rivalling fiber capacity – for residential homes. Currently the company is working with more than 20 leading mobile operators all over the world on 5G networking. The 5G plug-ins of Ericsson are supported by radio system, which are specifically focused on the capabilities that telecom operators can leverage within current networks to enable facilitating their evolution to 5G.
The 5G plug-ins comprise of Massive MIMO plug-in, Multi-User MIMO plug-in, RAN Virtualization plug-in, Intelligent Connectivity plug-in and the Latency Reduction plug-in. The plug-ins are already available for operator trials and from next year that is 2017 it will be available for commercial networks. Massive MIMO improves the capacity of the networks as well as the user experience. MU-MIMO enhances network capacity, reduces interference and also provides a better user experience. By enabling Virtual Network Functions to be centralized on a common platform, to support 4G and 5G, RAN Virtualization improves network efficiency and performance. According to Times Of India, Where 5G and 4G coverage areas overlap, Intelligent Connectivity enables the network to robustly anchor and intelligently route data based on application requirements and network resource availability, increasing the combined data throughput of 4G and 5G resources. To enable instant network access and more frequent transmissions Latency Reduction plug-in shortens access procedures and modifies the frame structure.