Arqiva Unveil First UK Trial of 5G Mobile as ITU Set Draft Performance Spec

The ITU has published a draft of its performance specification for the future 5G (IMT-2020) based Mobile Broadband technology, which calls for a download speed of 100Mbps (50Mbps upload) in dense urban areas. On top of that Arqiva will launch the first UK trials in London during H2-2017.

In order to be correctly described as 5G the International Telecommunication Union has already stated (here) that the technology must be able to deliver at least a peak performance capability of 20Gbps (Gigabits per second), although this is capacity that is intended to be shared between many users. By comparison the official specification for 4G originally put its comparable figure at about 1Gbps+.

However the ITU’s latest Draft Report ITU-R M.[IMT-2020.TECH PERF REQ] effectively sets the full “minimum requirements” related to 5G’s technical performance in IMT-2020 radio interfaces, which also confirms that the upload speed would need to deliver an impressive 10Gbps.

François Rancy, Director of ITU’s Radiocommunication Bureau, said:

“The IMT-2020 standard is set to be the global communication network for the coming decades and is on track to be in place by 2020. The next step is to agree on what will be the detailed specifications for IMT-2020, a standard that will underpin the next generations of mobile broadband and IoT connectivity.”

The draft will then almost certainly be approved ITU-R Study Group 5 at its next meeting in November 2017, which means that we should see the first full 5G specification proposal by the the very end of 2017 as planned. After that the final specification will be refined and hopefully agreed during 2018.

Summary of 5G’s Key Minimum Performance Requirements

* The minimum requirements for peak data rate are as follows:
– Downlink peak data rate is 20 Gbit/s.
– Uplink peak data rate is 10 Gbit/s.

* The minimum requirements for peak spectral efficiencies are as follows:
– Downlink peak spectral efficiency is 30 bit/s/Hz.
– Uplink peak spectral efficiency is 15 bit/s/Hz.

* The target values for the user experienced data rate are as follows in the Dense Urban – eMBB test environment:
– Downlink user experienced data rate is 100 Mbit/s.
– Uplink user experienced data rate is 50 Mbit/s.

NOTE: The target for rural performance isn’t as clearly described, although the document appears to indicate that speeds would be about half or less than half of the above. However this depends on the evironment and type of mobile setup etc.

* The minimum requirements for user plane latency are:
– 4 ms for eMBB (Enhanced Mobile Broadband, such as in a normal mobile environment)
– 1 ms for URLLC (Ultra-reliable and low-latency communications, such as fixed wireless)

* The minimum requirement for control plane latency is 20 ms. Proponents are encouraged to consider lower control plane latency, e.g. 10 ms. Control plane latency refers to the transition time from a most “battery efficient” state (e.g. Idle state) to the start of continuous data transfer (e.g. Active state) and so you’d expect it to be slower than a live network.

* The minimum requirement for connection density is 1,000,000 devices per km2.

* The requirement for bandwidth is at least 100 MHz. The RIT/SRIT shall support bandwidths up to 1 GHz for operation in higher frequency bands (e.g. above 6 GHz).

* The minimum requirement for mobility interruption time is 0 ms. Mobility interruption time is the shortest time duration supported by the system during which a user terminal cannot exchange user plane packets with any base station during transitions.

However the other big news today is that Arqiva, which owns and manages many of the United Kingdom’s radio masts, has announced their intention to work with Samsung and conduct the country’s first 5G trial in London during the second half of 2017.

The trial will focus on the city centre and aim to deploy an end-to-end Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) network solution that uses 5G technology, which is perhaps more akin to the Home Broadband style service offered by Relish Wireless in the same area than a normal Mobile network. Much like other trials around the world, 5G kit isn’t yet ready for a proper mobile environment and so fixed wireless is the early focus.

Apparently this trial will harness Samsung’s favoured 28GHz radio spectrum band via millimetre Wave (mmW) supporting base stations, which will also be able to use modern technologies like beam-forming. The focus will be on high-density coverage and ultra-high-bandwidth connectivity to customer homes and or offices.

Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO of Arqiva, said:

“5G will be a crucial pillar of the UK’s economy in the 2020s. The smarter network infrastructure and an enhanced ability to support exponential scale for connectivity will open the doors to further applications across a variety of markets such as IoT, industrial applications and the full promise of autonomous vehicles.

Our trial with Samsung will demonstrate the enormous potential of 5G FWA as an alternative to fibre for delivering ultra-high speed connectivity to homes and businesses.”

Arqiva expects their trial service to deliver multi-Gigabit broadband speeds to whole neighbourhoods in central London, which could be useful as there are still a number of notspots to be found in the city centre. However at present we don’t know the exact coverage plan or scale of the trial itself.

Meanwhile, over in China, BT’s (EE) partner Huawei has just completed a field performance test of its 5G New Radio (NR) technology using the much more Mobile environment friendly 3.5GHz band, which is within the frequency range of spectrum that Ofcom are targeting for the same technology (here). However no clear data on its performance or coverage during this trial has been released.

One thing that’s become abundantly clear today is that the research phase of 5G is now slowly making way for the final development side of things, although we don’t expect to see the first commercial roll-out beginning in the UK until 2020; partly because Ofcom has a lot of spectrum organisation / clearance and auction work to do first.