Every decade, mobile networks take a great leap forward to the next generation, with innovation staged in two major cycles: foundational and transformational phases. In the foundational stage, companies address the previous generation’s shortcomings, while building the backbone to support the succeeding transformation. Maturing this phase is critical in the development of each new generation, as the industry requires time to refine and robustly productize advancements, making them reliably available for widespread adoption. Under the transformational phase, the industry explores new capabilities that would otherwise not be possible with previous generations. These revolutionary capabilities open the floodgates to innovative applications, services and business models. With 5G, we are just about to enter this transformation phase, through 5G Advanced.
This article puts a spotlight on 5G’s early achievements, while illuminating the next phase of its evolution. It elaborates on why the best of this latest network generation is still to come and how it will unlock new business avenues and catalyze emerging technologies, which were inaccessible to its predecessors in both consumer and enterprise sectors.
The transition toward 5G Advanced fueled by new capabilities
The industry’s shift to 5G has, thus far, gravitated toward use cases that require Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) performance. The first wave of 5G deployment has focused mainly on performance improvements for smartphones and some new device types, notably laptops and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) devices, delivering faster download and upload speeds compared to 4G networks. This makes 5G ideal for applications like High-Definition (HD) video streaming, Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR) and online gaming on mobile devices. Now, 5G is ready to enter its transformational phase, creating new and lucrative business opportunities in consumer and enterprise segments. The introduction of 5G Advanced will address the initial limitations of 5G and the new releases will refine foundational aspects brought by early 5G releases even further and improve existing systems. This evolution is to be sustained by the advent of 5G Advanced and, while some cellular improvements will come about organically from the technology, others will be the result of the introduction of new features and applications that will develop a plethora of use cases and applications.
Key 5G Advanced features include Sidelink, enhanced Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) support, improved Reduced Capability (RedCap) and more accurate positioning. These features are fundamental 5G evolution vectors that are designed to help unlock and more efficiently support both existing and a broad range of new use cases and more challenging applications. These new market applications will have an impact not just on the consumer market, but also represent a huge opportunity in the enterprise sector across its multiple verticals, offering features and tools that are ripe for enterprise deployment and innovation.
Such advances need to be more fine-tuned and sophisticated and need to be supported by enhanced technology hardware. To aid this drive to the next phase of 5G evolution across product segments and lead the evolution of The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards, Qualcomm has launched the high-performance Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System, the world’s first 5G Advanced-ready solution. Its features allow for increased data throughput and improved spectrum efficiency, ultimately enabling the industry to bring 5G capabilities to smartphones and more device types, including FWA, connected Personal Computers (PCs), wearables, autonomous vehicles and a plethora of enterprise devices. As the world’s first 5G Advanced-ready solution, Snapdragon X75 will serve as the enablement platform for operators and infrastructure to test and commercialize 5G Advanced globally, starting in 2024.
The Snapdragon X75 platform joins the Snapdragon X35 5G Modem-RF System, the world’s first 5G RedCap Modem-RF system, which will help drive new 5G use cases aimed at cost-effective, energy-constrained devices with reduced complexity in smaller form factors, such as wearables, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices, next generation Extended Reality (XR) glasses, etc. In comparison, a number of companies have created chips that target other capabilities such as NTN.
5G Advanced as a foundational catalyst for 6G
The mobile telecommunications industry is currently in the process of migrating networks to 5G Standalone (SA) architecture. This transition is essential to lay the foundation for 5G Advanced. With its simplified network architecture and use of a broader spectrum of bands, 5G SA allows for improved coverage and capacity, latency in the millisecond range and speeds up to 20 Gigabits per Second (Gbps). This performance can enable new mission-critical applications with demanding requirements, including autonomous vehicles, remotely operated vehicles and collaborative robots. The self-healing capabilities of 5G SA will enable the network to be more reliable and resilient. This allows it to address potential failures that could affect network operations. Such failures include hardware or software anomalies, power outages, cyberattacks, interference issues and more. The 5G SA architecture will also make the network future-proof, which will likely accelerate the migration to 5G Advanced and 6G networks and services once related standards have been ratified.
The upgrades to 5G Advanced will usher in the next wave of 5G expansion, providing capabilities and technical features to better address enterprise pain points, while also being designed with the key ingredients of sustainability and energy efficiency. It will also lay the technical foundations and accelerate the path toward 6G, gradually evolving to higher capacity, better sustainability and enterprise adaptability. Discussions around the implementation of 6G are premature, thus far, as it is set to be the future wireless innovation platform for 2030 and beyond, but there is still much to be excited about, as it will propel next-level experiences and innovative use cases, blending the physical and virtual worlds. Notably, 6G will be more than just a new radio as the focus will move away from higher speeds and organic improvements, focusing instead on an end-to-end technology evolution of the 5G system to bring new levels of performance.
The concepts being discussed in this nascent vision of 6G include enabling new spectrum bands (e.g., upper mid-bands in 7-16 Gigahertz (GHz) and sub-Terahertz (THz)), joint communication and sensing, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-native network design, sustainability and evolved duplex schemes to enhance spectral efficiency and decrease latency. Furthermore, key technology drivers leading the way to 6G will deliver next-generation broadband experiences, drive new use cases and broaden digital transformation across industries. Core technology enhancements, notably Machine Learning (ML) and AI will expand, pushing sensing toward the connected intelligent edge, offering more immersive, ambient user experiences and ecosystems. In addition, the many enterprise use cases and applications that have been expected in 5G Advanced will be migrated to 6G, while the proliferation of AI/ML throughout the network will pave the way for 6G and future networks that need to be fully automated.
Figure 1: 5G Advanced providing a key transformational step to 6G
Key takeaways and conclusions
- 5G Advanced is billed as the transformational phase of 5G bringing new features and capabilities not possible previously. 5G Advanced will form the foundational building blocks that will enable the eventual evolution to 6G.
- The evolution to 5G Advanced will enable the creation of new business opportunities targeting enterprise transformation, in addition to unlocking completely new use cases in the consumer market.
- To make 5G Advanced a success requires a huge amount of collaborative work across multiple supply chains. Industry should also support the technology with innovative business models to unleash the full potential of the technology, while operators need to take the critical step from 5G NSA to 5G SA to derive benefit from the transition.
