Qualcomm Launches R&D OTA Testbeds and System Simulations for 5G

Qualcomm launched its new and updated R&D over-the-air (OTA) testbeds and system simulations at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The chipmaker said that the launch displayed its "continued leadership in enhancing the 5G system foundation to bring even more capacity, wider coverage, and lower latency to mobile operators and devices on a global scale".

Qualcomm Venture in 5G Testing and System Simulations

At the occasion, John Smee, vice president, engineering, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., said, "our new 5G R&D technology OTA testbeds and system simulations build on more than 30 years of deep wireless technology expertise, end-to-end system knowledge, global experience, and exemplify our leadership in advancing 5G for the next decade.”

Notably, in its latest research, Qualcomm said that 5G adoption has grown faster than any generation before. The new prototypes that the chipmaker introduces include wide-area 5G system foundation, support for mmWave, smart transportation, industry 4.0 and XR. The prototypes bundle these with good energy efficiency.

Prototype Features

Qualcomm said that its latest wide-area 5G OTA test networks, prototypes, and system simulations show new capabilities and efficiencies of the 5G system. The chipmaker has focused the demonstrations around 5 key 5G research topics. These include subband half-duplex, wide-area 5G positioning, cross-node machine learning, 5G NR-Light evolution with sidelink, and 5G device disaggregation.

The chipmaker also showed that its mmWave OTA prototypes specialize in 5 key areas such as smart mmWave repeaters, machine learning-based beam prediction, network topology optimization, mmWave IoT expansion, and mmWave in smart factories. Furthermore, Qualcomm has said that its new prototypes will support 5G V2X (vehicle-to-everything).

The chipmaker said that it will help bring increased road safety by connecting cars to other cars, pedestrians, bicyclists, road infrastructure and more. Qualcomm also said that its new prototype further drives the 5G V2X sidelink evolution for delivering enhanced network capacity. This works by offloading high-bandwidth data such as local high-res 3D maps from wide-area 5G networks. As such, it brings robust communication with distributed time synchronization to maintain communication even when GNSS is unavailable.

As for Industry 4.0 applications, Qualcomm’s 5G OTA testbeds show how 5G sets the foundations for 4.0. The chipmaker listed a few examples of such Industry 4.0 applications. These included TSN with micro-second level time synchronization, ultra-high reliability with CoMP, indoor precise positioning. Also, the OTA testbeds introduce sidelink to industrial IoT for more efficient device-to-device communication.

Through 5G and distributed computing, XR will become more immersive and smooth, Qualcomm said. It displayed efficient support of various VR users across applications via its 5G mmWave OTA system.

Qualcomm also talked about growing applications of mobile networks. The tech continues to support wider bandwidths, denser deployments, and more users. As such, the need of greener, more energy-efficient networks has become greater than ever. Therefore, the company said that these prototypes support advanced techniques, such as digital post distortion and high-efficiency modulation schemes. These techniques greatly reduce the energy consumption of a mobile network while sustaining high performance.