Opportunities and Challenges of mmWave NR

The realization of a seamless, fully connected world requires enhancements to our current communications technology, from both a network infrastructure perspective and a user equipment (UE) perspective. These demands are directly driven by the consumer’s expectations, application requirements, and saturation of frequency bands used in current spectrum. The fifth generation (5G) of mobile communication networks, and specifically millimeter-wave (mmWave) New Radio (NR), aims to enable this future with ultra-low-latency, ultra-wideband services, opening up a whole new era of applications and services, much like 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) did a decade ago. To enable 5G, the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is focusing on defining the technical specifications for NR technology, as well as enhancements to the current LTE. However, enabling and launching 5G NR presents both technological opportunities and challenges. In this column, we explore how 5G mmWave challenges are being approached in 3GPP standardization and how solutions can enable the technology to help achieve broader bandwidths and harness some of the inherent benefits of higher-frequency communications.