Connectivity Technology Blog

Getting broadband to your house or place of work is always a nightmare. If you own the place, then it's okay for holes to be drilled in the walls, etc. For a lot of people renting accommodation or premises, they may not have an option to get fiber or wired broadband of their choice. In addition, the ISPs have long term contracts and strict clauses that people end up paying a lot more than they though they will. Almost three months, 11 Openreach engineers (one drilled through the new fibre cable), a broken window, no show appointments and we finally have fibre-to-home broadband! Woo. #disappointment #breathholdingchampions @OpenreachHelp @bt_uk pic.twitter.com/z0Dguoh52e — BAble (@benwablett) August 29, 2019 In such scenarios Fixed Wireless is a fantastic alternative to a wired alternative. While traditional fixed wireless requires an external antenna for reliable connectivity and higher throughput, many new CPEs (Customer Premises Equipments) are being built with hi...

Came across this interesting webinar by IHS Markit Technology on 'The role of next gen microwave in the 5G era' with Huawei. The video of that is embedded below. The main speakers include Richard Webb, Research Director, Mobile Backhaul and Small Cells, IHS Markit and Renato Lombardi, Huawei Fellow and Head of Italy Research Center, Huawei Technologies The evolution of 5G places new demands on the backhaul/fronthaul network and drives technology decisions for operators. As you can see the picture above, Microwave is still expected to play a huge role in case of 5G backhaul. The webinar explores the challenges for the next generation of transport network in terms of architecture, key performance metrics, and technology solutions as operators seek to deliver more granular services and latency- and bandwidth-sensitive applications, and to support new mobile devices. In particular, it looks at the capabilities of microwave as part of the changing backhaul network as oper...

In the 6G Summit, Tanbir Haque from InterDigital talked about the need for new Air-Interfaces for Ultra-Low Power Communications and the challenges, solutions and potential benefits associated with that. The future vision is to have something like 1 Trillion IoT devices in 2030 but it will require us to re imagine the radio transceiver, the air interface and the overall system. Currently used DRX (Discontinuous Reception) & PSM (Power Saving Mode) based approaches in 3GPP LTE-M & NB-IoT suffer from an inherent tradeoff between device reachability & battery life. Longer DRX cycles result in extended battery life at the cost of latency and Devices are not reachable during periods of deep sleep in PSM. Furthermore, mobile devices must make periodic measurements for TAU procedures thereby limiting the maximum achievable battery life. This necessitates the need to introduce on demand features to the 3GPP system framework in order to break this latency vs battery life trade...

Here is an old tutorial explaining high level mobile network architecture, starting from GSM and then looking at GPRS, UMTS, LTE & 5G. Slides and video below High-level architecture of Mobile Cellular Networks from 2G to 5G from 3G4G Related links : Free 2G, 3G, 4G & 5G Training Videos 5G (IMT-2020) Wireless 5G vs 4G: what is the difference?

In January 1985 the UK launched its first mobile networks. Now, thirty years on, many people and companies in the UK have been celebrating this enormous achievements and advances that have been made since then and which have seen the mobile evolve from a humble telephone into the multimedia pocket computer which has become such an essential part of modern life. It was simply not possible in 1985 to envisage a country that would be able to boast more active mobile phones than people or to have along the way clocked up several world firsts, and be now leading on the deployment of 4G and shaping the future 5G technologies. Back in 2015, University of Salford organised a seminar to mark 30 years of mobile networks in the UK. Speakers from the 4 UK MNOs, EE, Vodafone, Three, O2 and other contributors pieced together a ‘phenomenal story’ of the mobile phone at MediaCity campus on Saturday, September 12, to mark three decades of the technological revolution in the UK. The talks are em...

An introductory presentation (slides & video) below to explain what are different backhaul options available for 3G/4G/5G mobile networks today Different Types of Backhaul from 3G4G Related Post : The 3G4G Blog: Small Cells, Macrocells, Backhaul, Infrastructure and other connectivity solutions from #MWC18