As more and more carriers work towards deployment of 5G technologies for their network of subscribers, other technology companies like Samsung are aiming to be among the top three names in 5G, and companies like Qualcomm are doing their part to move closer and closer to the reality of 5G networks being within reach. Today marks a new level of achievement towards that goal, as Qualcomm has just unveiled a 5G system for testing, demonstrating, and running trials on 5G designs. The new system, referred to by Qualcomm as the 5G New Radio Prototype System, is meant to showcase Qualcomm’s 5G designs that would allow them to reach low-latency and data rates of multiple gigabits per second while operating under the 6GHz spectrum bands.
While Qualcomm states that 5G will work across multiple spectrum bands and will do so efficiently, the reason for operating on spectrum bands under 6GHz for this particular system is because bands below 6GHz are of critical importance to ensuring that 5G network coverage is not only everywhere, but also flexible in its deployment as well as having various different use cases, according to Qualcomm. The system will be used to push forward the standardization of 3GPP indirectly through the implementation of designs on the system.
Qualcomm also plans to use the prototype system to meet 5G NR trial goals with mobile operators as well as infrastructure vendors and 5G NR commercial network launches that may happen in the future. The system itself is comprised of a base station and user equipment, and it has been designed to support wide RF bandwidths that are over 100 MHz which is how Qualcomm plans to achieve their goals of multigigabit data rates. Qualcomm also boasts the “significantly” lower over-the-air latency compared to current 4G LTE networks thanks to the prototype system’s integrated subframe design. Following this announcement, Qualcomm plans to show off the prototype system at Mobile World Congress Shanghai, which begins this week, and event attendees will be able to see Qualcomm’s efforts beginning from June 29th through July 1st, located at the China Mobile Communications Corporations booth.