Samsung hosts final 5G standards forum

A meeting being held to finalise relevant standard technologies for 5G commercialisation is being hosted by Samsung Electronics in Busan.

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) working groups’ final meeting will take place from 21–25 May.

About 1500 standards experts from chipset, handset and equipment vendors including Samsung, Qualcomm, as well as major mobile operators such as Verizon, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, KT and SK Telecom will attend to complete the 5G phase-1 standard.

“The first 5G standard, which includes innovative technologies developed by Samsung Electronics, will be completed at this 3GPP conference,” said Seunghwan Cho, Executive Vice President of Samsung Research.

“This will lead the market to commercialise 5G communication to serve as the core infrastructure for the coming Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

At this conference, all working groups (RAN working groups 1 to 5) that develop 5G wireless technology assemble to confirm the final technologies for 5G commercialisation. These include 5G wireless access technology providing ultrahigh-speed data and ultralow latency and the conformance testing method for 5G terminals.

In particular, the RAN4 working group, chaired by Samsung, will decide the radio performance requirements for 5G terminals and base stations including the 3.5 GHz and 28 GHz bands. This requirement will inform the radio regulations, which will be key in the deployment of a 5G spectrum when 5G commercialisation starts in earnest in Korea, the US and Japan.

In December of last year, 3GPP first approved the 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) standard that uses the existing 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) as the anchor for connecting to 5G. And as the 5G Standalone (SA) standard will be completed in this Busan meeting, the 5G phase-1 standard will be officially approved at the 3GPP plenary next month in the US.

Samsung is leading 5G as a pioneer in the areas of new technology development, standard activities and patents. With 1254 patents as of this month, Samsung Electronics ranked first on the list of 3GPP member companies with essential 5G standard patents declared to the European Telecommunications Standardisation Organisation (ETSI).

The company was successful in the world’s first 5G mobility demonstration between base stations over an ultrahigh-frequency (mmWave) band in 2015, having started its 5G research in 2012. In 2017, the company succeeded in 5G communication on a high-speed vehicle traveling at 200 km/h and demonstrated the world’s first 8K video download and 4K video upload on the bullet train.

Samsung signed a 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) commercial agreement with Verizon in January of this year based on its industry-leading 5G technologies, standards leadership and numerous field demonstrations. This February, Samsung became the first in the world to get approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the US government agency regulating interstate communications, for 5G Radio access unit and outdoor customer premise equipment (CPE), and also obtained approval for its 5G home router (indoor CPE) this month.

Image caption: Younsun Kim (centre), Principal Engineer of Standards Research Team at Samsung Research, is welcoming attendees at the 3GPP 5G Conference Working Group (RAN1) meeting, held in Busan on 21 May 2018.

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