5G, Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden

To be ready for commercial networks in 2020, 5G research and development is coming out of the labs and into live test networks. Learn about Ericsson’s latest 5G initiative, Multipoint Connectivity with Distributed MIMO, in the company’s live test network in Sweden. While LTE technology is evolving to become an integral part of tomorrow’s 5G networks, 5G will also include innovative new air interfaces between the device and the network. Ericsson’s 5G air interface initiative, labeled “NX”, includes this new Multipoint Connectivity with Distributed MIMO capability. 5G will involve the entire future communication eco-system, from devices to mobile access, IP core and into the cloud. Ericsson’s latest 5G test network initiatives focus on the interactions between mobile devices and the radio access network, in both indoor and outdoor circumstances. Ericsson welcomes mobile operators, eco-system partners, members of academia, tech media and analysts to visit these sites to witness and interact with Ericsson 5G innovations.

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A live demonstration of 5G – LTE Dual Connectivity in the Ericsson 5G Radio Test Bed with Niclas Wiberg, Principal Researcher, Baseband Software Research in Business Unit Radio at Ericsson.

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Dr. Dag Lindbo, 5G Research Software Lead at Ericsson, presents a live demonstration of Ericsson 5G Radio Prototypes achieving peak throughput of more than 25 Gbps using MU-MIMO, beam tracking and Massive MIMO (the combination of MIMO and beamforming with a large number of antenna elements). Each compact 5G Radio Prototype – the size of a piece of carry-on luggage – supports the equivalent of 40 LTE carriers. The multi-Gbps speeds delivered by the Ericsson 5G Radio Prototypes can not only support growing mobile broadband and video demand on smartphones and other mobile devices, they also provide a viable and cost effective alternative to residential fiber connections. 5G will also impact the Internet of Things (IoT), enabling new applications for smart vehicles and transport architecture, remote control of heavy machinery in hazardous environments, remote surgery and new levels of human-IoT interaction including immersive augmented reality and immersive gaming.

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Short video of a live demonstration of Ericsson 5G Radio Prototypes using MU-MIMO to support both fixed and mobile devices, maintaining reliable, multi-Gbps connections using beam tracking. The Ericsson Radio Prototypes demonstrated are also supporting Massive MIMO, combining MIMO and beamforming with a large number of antenna elements to improve both the throughput and energy efficiency of the network.

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5G will usher in a shift from the network-focused concept of cells to the user-focused concept of beams. Instead of sending out energy in all directions, beams concentrate the energy to send the signal more directly to the user. By doing this, 5G will deliver higher smartphones speeds and fiber-equivalent residential wireless connections, but it will also unlock exciting new IoT use case from immersive augmented reality to remote haptic-enabled surgery to connected cars and smarter cities. 5G will impact the entire mobile network and associated ecosystem, from devices to radio access to the mobile core and into the cloud. Ericsson 5G Plug-Ins address the radio access network and leverage the technology innovations enabled by the award-winning Ericsson 5G Radio Test Bed and Ericsson 5G Radio Prototypes already deployed and in operator 5G field trials worldwide.

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5G will give consumers higher smartphones speeds and fiber-like wireless connections to the home, and it will unlock exciting new IoT use case from immersive augmented reality to remote haptic-enabled surgery to connected cars and smarter cities. 5G will impact the entire mobile network and associated ecosystem, from devices to radio access to the mobile core and into the cloud. Ericsson 5G Plug-Ins are designed for the radio access network and leverage the technology innovations enabled by the award-winning Ericsson 5G Radio Test Bed and Ericsson 5G Radio Prototypes already deployed and in operator 5G field trials worldwide.

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In February 2016, the Ericsson 5G Radio Prototypes delivered more than 25 Gbps throughput to fixed and mobile devices, using Multi-User MIMO and beam tracking,. On June 10, 2016, we filmed a live vehicular mobility demonstration showing more than 7 Gbps consistent throughput supported to a moving vehicle. 5G vehicular-speed mobility support is critical to a number of new 5G use cases including driverless buses, self-driving cars and remote healthcare applications.

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To be relevant for any industry, 5G must support any service or application required, in a flexible and efficient way. Different services or use-cases pose different requirements on 5G. For the mining business we can imagine two very different examples, spanning the space of 5G...

- Remote control of vehicles and machines
Remote control of equipment increases productivity, since you can enter the mine shorter time after a blast and shorten the process cycle time. Also, safety is improved, since you can avoid having personnel in the most dangerous areas.

- Smart ventilation and millions of sensors
Optimal ventilation control can give substantial savings – a lot of energy is spent on pushing fresh air down a mine. Sensors for controlling ventilation typically do not have high requirements on the connectivity, but they may be many (millions) and you need to analyze a lot of sensor data in almost real-time to make the ventilation-control efficient.

Once you implement 5G and support these use cases the innovation starts.

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The transportation industry is striving to improve their efficiency and reduce carbon footprint. One way to achieve this is to have trucks driving at close distances, creating so called truck platoons, tightly coordinated through vehicle to vehicle communication. Ericsson collaborate with Scania to understand 5G requirements of platooning.

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- Traffic management is the system that will make our transport system smart. We want to make an intelligent transport system to manage and proactively design traffic flows for a better transport services and traffic environment. To be able to create this connected, cooperative and automated traffic system we need 5G to handle this mission critical communications. So eventually it will be the bus catching you and not the other way around.

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IoT haptic healthcare applications, including remote robotic surgery, empower doctors with the sense of touch, complementing high definition video and audio connections to create an immersive environment. In this live demonstration, based on research collaboration between Ericsson and King’s College London, we experience the concept of a robotic finger able to detect hard tissue within a soft tissue sample. The demonstration leverages the 5G capabilities of very high throughput (current Ericsson 5G trials are hitting more than 25 Gbps), low latency and network slicing. 5G network slicing supports different flows of traffic – in this demo, for example, we have the close view camera, the wide angle view camera and tactile remote control -- and enables different quality of service parameters to be applied to each.

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Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) and China Mobile have partnered to conduct the world’s first 5G-enabled drone prototype field trial on operator’s network. The trial represents a major milestone on the road to 5G.
In the trial, held in Wuxi in China’s Jiangsu province, a drone was flown using operator’s cellular network with 5G-enabled technologies and with handovers across multiple sites. In order to demonstrate the concept’s validity in a real-world setting, the handovers were performed between sites that were simultaneously in use by commercial mobile phone users.

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ericsson.com/en/networks/offerings/5g/5g-radio

Ericsson is introducing the world’s first 5G NR-capable radio, called Ericsson AIR 6468. It features 64 transmit and 64 receive antennas enabling it to support our 5G plug-ins for both Massive MIMO and Multi-User MIMO.

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To support both growing mobile broadband demand from smartphone users and a massive number of connected things driven by the Internet of Things (IoT), the next standard in mobile network, 5G, will include an evolution of today’s LTE technology and a new, standardized radio interface known as New Radio (NR). Ericsson Radio System now features the industry’s first pre-standard 5G NR compatible radio. It is designed to support today’s LTE networks while being fully compatible with the new 5G NR standard. This, combined with the Ericsson 5G Plug-Ins software and Ericsson Radio System baseband, makes Ericsson the first to deliver the necessary elements for a pre-standard 5G access network. And, with network performance already playing a crucial role in driving smartphone user loyalty towards operators, according to the recent ConsumerLab report, Ericsson Radio System also now includes a range of new products that support 5G technology concepts – such as gigabit per second user speeds -- on today’s LTE networks.

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