Industry Alliances and Organizations Multiple industry groups are working on 5G deployments and standards. These groups include: O-RAN Alliance: A group of telecom companies focused on fostering wireless networks that are open software-defined and virtualized, enabling architects to mix and match products from different In 2018, the xRAN and C-RAN organizations merged to form O-RAN. […]

Functional Split Options for 5G Networks As network architects work to meet the 5G challenges of increased traffic and data flows, a fundamental question is how much intelligence to put near the antenna versus at the DUs or CUs. Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) as well as industry-standards groups, such as the 3GPP, IEEE, Telecom Infra […]

The main motive for the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) is to bring software-defined controllability to RAN to increase system performance as on the path towards 5G, with network densification, and availability of different types of spectrum bands, it is increasingly a more difficult task to optimally allocate radio resources, implement handovers, manage interference, balance load […]

The O-RAN Alliance is the main driver of the OpenRAN concept, especially the efforts to standardize interfaces, in addition to the TIP. Founded in 2018 by AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DOCOMO, and Orange. The O-RAN Alliance’s goal is to foster the development of reference designs and standards such that current and future RANs […]

5G shouldn’t be seen simply as the next generation of mobile communications. It’s a smart ecosystem that’s ready to catch new innovations and highly customized services. 4G to 5G Interworking 4G LTE and the 5G networks will continue to interwork for a number of years. This is why it’s essential to:  Support a seamless handover […]

Why do MNOs struggle to shift to Open RAN? I know many MNOs are struggling to shift their RAN strategy to OpenRAN in their 5G Roadmap due to many reasons like they can not get away from their monolithic supply chain from the big vendors. Also, there’re some interfaces that are still NOT open even if these […]

VoNR is IMS based voice services that use 5G as the access network (as opposed to LTE and VoLTE) Introduction Voice over New Radio (VoNR) is the IP Multimedia System (IMS) based voice calling services that use the 5G network for its source of Internet Protocol (IP) voice processing. The New Radio network communication is […]

The accurate benchmarking and scoring of networks that cover large geographic areas requires careful consideration of a number of factors. These include the technology used, the extent of coverage offered, mobile device evolution, customer population distribution, network usage, and tariff offerings.  Best QoE [Quailty of Experience] in daily life for a customer guarantees satisfaction and […]

In the early 1900’s two researchers working independently derived a relatively simple equation that serves as a Moore’s Law for the wireless industry: the Shannon- Hartley theorem. This theorem gives an upper bound to the amount of information that can be transmitted over the wireless channel where the individual channel capacity is dependent on only […]

In the cellular network, RAN provides wide-area wireless connectivity to mobile devices. Towards this end, it conducts two fundamental tasks: It converts IP packets to Physical Layer packets suitable for transmission over the time-varying mobile channel using packet and signal processing techniques. It conducts Radio Resource Management (RRM) control to determine how best to use […]

Some friends asked me, Should we have a 5G good data rate when seeing 5G Icon on our phone? Mmmm… My answer should be Yes, However it’s the not right answer as there’re many technical items we need to discuss first before answering this question.  Let’s remember this famous incident/debate from US company AT&T when […]

In June 2018, as 3GPP announced that the standalone (SA) standards have been frozen, the standardization of 5G Core (5GC) is complete. 5G network commercialization has begun and the world-wide mainstream operators are dedicated to 5G network construction. According to 5G deployment options, 5G voice solutions not only include the target solution Voice over New […]

  5G New Radio (NR) 3GPP is defining 5G NR in Release 15, with an initial release for a non-standalone operation scheduled for March 2018 and a full release for a standalone version scheduled for September 2018. 5G New Radio Release 15 Focus: 5G NR Release 15 features: Ability to operate in any frequency band, […]

The Gulf Countries (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman) are the front runner in the 5G Race. They started to think of 5G as early as Mid-2019. Use Cases: The main initial two uses cases are eMBB (Mobile) and FWA (Fixed Wireless Access). 5G Spectrum Band: The 5G Spectrum Auction is in two […]

The core of mobility management in 5G NR is very similar to the one in 4G LTE. As specified by 3GPP Rel. 15, mobility in mobile networks is divided into RRC_IDLE mobility, RRC_INACTIVE mobility, and RRC_CONNECTED mobility. RRC_IDLE and RRC_INACTIVE state in which UE does not have any established RRC connection. RRC_CONNECTED means that UE […]

The ITU-R IMT-2020 (5G) Vision includes three usage scenarios: eMBB, mMTC, and uRLLC. It also specifies the key capabilities of IMT-2020 which represent great improvements in comparison with the previous generation of IMT systems. To address diversified requirements from the envisioned usage scenarios in different phases of 5G, 5G needs access to “high”, “mid” and […]