5G Consolidates Deployment by Targeting New Bands [Mobile Radio]

Abstract

Leafing through the usual flurry of news and announcements by standardization bodies, regulators, operators, and manufactures, it is hard to miss the increasing number of reports of trials involving promising new portions of spectrum, such as the much-coveted C-band. Sitting astride the so-called Wi-Fi bands at 2.4 and 5 GHz, the C-band has special appeal for urban coverage given its expected range of 1-2 km, not too dissimilar from 4G deployments. In this sense, the C-band is not an unknown quantity, thus enabling operators to replicate their coverage strategies on a spectrum largely unused by cellular communication. Now that regulating authorities around the world have started auctioning off more and more chunks of this portion of spectrum, interest is growing in trials targeting the C-band, with an eye toward coexistence issues with legacy technologies operating in it.