Connectivity Technology Blog

I was involved with looking at how Aerostats & Drones can help bring connectivity, especially in hard to reach areas or in case of disaster recovery and other emergencies. I wrote about it in detail here . Last month, 3GPP did a summary of all things 3GPP is doing in this area. To address the needs of a new and quickly maturing sector, there has been a lot of activity in the 3GPP Working Groups to ensure that the 5G system will meet the connectivity needs of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) – consisting of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (aka. drones) and UAV controllers under the watchful eye of UAS traffic management. Release 15 - Enhanced LTE Support for Aerial Vehicles (TR 36.777) A study to Investigate the ability for aerial vehicles to be served using LTE networks is now published, identifying further performance enhancements for UE-based solutions, Network-based solutions, downlink interference mitigation, uplink interference mitigation, mobility performance and aerial UE I

Wi-Fi 6, a.k.a. 802.11ax promises a break from issues that have traditionally plagued Wi-Fi access and QoE. The move from OFDM to OFDMA makes it similar to 4G/5G access technology. Along with beamforming / beam steering and MU-MIMO one can confidently say this is similar to 5G-Light (not to be confused with NR-Light ). A short video at the bottom explains Wi-Fi 6 in more details. The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), recently announced the successful completion of its phase one trial of Wi-Fi 6 infrastructure and services at the Mettis Aerospace factory in the UK.  The trial was the first of its kind in the world and an important part of the WBA’s Wi-Fi 6 test and development program. According to their press release : Tests included applications of 4K video streaming, large scale file transfers, messaging and voice/video communications as well as the first stage of IoT sensor and mixed reality testing. Previous implementation tests with Wi-Fi failed to work in Mettis’ challe

In the recent Telecom Infra Project Summit 2019, there was an announcement about the launch of Non-Terrestrial Connectivity Solutions Group that will explore how Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) will co-exist with Terrestrial Networks and what is required for it to work just out of the box. This group is being led by Vodafone and Telefónica. The group will be working on 2 initial use cases: Connecting the Unconnected Emergency Relief There are some very aggressive timelines for the project as lab trials are proposed for Q4 2020 and live pilots by Q2 2021. There are many challenges that need to be overcome as a part of this project to have a solution that is portable and available in a box that could be easily transported and be set-up in a very short time. One of the solutions I was involved in, with UK MNO EE is described here . Another thing worth remembering, especially as one of the goals of this group is to connect the unconnected, a legacy technology like 2G or 3