After hosting 3GPP’s 5G phase-1 standards discussions in Busan, South Korea, last week, Samsung say the results of the Busan discussions will be announced in June at the general meeting to be held in the U.S. Samsung has been very involved in the 5G standards process and touted the fact that “the work carried out on the frontlines by Samsung engineers has helped to bring about the commercialization of 5G 21 months faster than the time taken for the 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) transition, which was 39 months.”
“The progress demonstrates how the company has been leading 5G standardization from the beginning to the end, in addition to its technological development as a pioneer in the field,” said Samsung in a press release.
Samsung noted that the official 3GPP 5G standards process for the first phase of 5G was a 27-month journey that began in April 2016, although it also highlighted that related technology work developed outside of the standards timeline.
“Samsung Electronics has been working on ultra-high frequency three years faster than other companies,” said Younsun Kim, Samsung Research’s principal engineer of Standards Research Team and vice chairman of RAN1 working group in 3GPP said in a press release. “When the world started to discuss the setting of standards, Samsung had already developed the related technologies. We had strong aspirations to bring the standardization for 5G commercialization faster than any other company in the world.”
3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) is the international standards organization responsible for industry-wide 5G standards. Broken into several groups, the RAN or radio access network working groups met last week. Release 15, the current standard in progress, has parts already approved. Release 15’s NSA 5G standard section that mixes 4G LTE with 5G was approved in December 2017. That approval has been fueling some of the rush to 5G that has accelerated this year.
3GPP’s RAN working groups 1 to 5 have voted on final technologies for 5G commercialization. Topics included 5G wireless access technology (ultra-high speed data and ultra-low latency), radio performance requirements for 5G terminals and base stations for 3.5GHz and 28GHz bands, and conformance testing for 5G terminals. Samsung chairs the RAN4 group deciding the radio performance requirements.
