The platform is designed to improve mobile experiences and speed up 5G availability to users worldwide
The headquarters of Qualcomm in the La Jolla area of San Diego, California. (Credit: Coolcaesar/Wikipedia)
Qualcomm Technologies has unveiled its second-generation 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) platform for small cells with global spectrum band support.
The new platform, which is said to be the industry’s first 3GPP Release 16 5G Open RAN platform, is designed to support all commercial global mmWave and Sub-6 GHz bands.
The company has developed the platform to take mmWave performance to more places, indoors and outdoors, and around the globe.
Qualcomm’s new platform also offers new Sub-6 GHz opportunities with small cell densification in public and private networks.
With enhanced features and new spectrum support, the platform is expected to improve mobile experiences as well as speed up 5G performance and availability to users around the world.
It is designed to provide enhanced connectivity in crowded environments like airports, venues, hospitals, and train stations. In addition, it facilitates the speedy deployment and commercialisation of open and virtualised 5G RAN networks.
By providing support for features including Enhanced Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (eURLLC), the new platform, with its Release 16 support, is also expected to boost the transition to the factory of the future.
Qualcomm Technologies product management senior director Gerardo Giaretta said: “Qualcomm Technologies’ engineers have been leading in the small cells industry for over a decade with our Qualcomm RAN platform.
“As Open RAN and small cells infrastructure continue to gain momentum, Qualcomm Technologies is at the forefront of delivering cutting edge 5G mmWave and Sub-6 GHz technology to power 5G networks on a global scale.
“Small cells have been at the heart of the global 5G proliferation and Qualcomm Technologies is leading the charge as the industry transitions to open and virtualized 5G RAN networks.”
The 5G Open RAN small cell platform features advanced technologies with improved data speeds, capacity, and global band support.
According to Qualcomm, the 3GPP Release 16 Modem-RF solution provides data speeds of up to 8Gbps with 1GHz bandwidth support on mmWave.
The platform also facilitates Power over Ethernet (PoE) support that enables utilisation of power and backhaul from one source to simplify deployments and reduces cost.
In March this year, SoftBank has launched its 5G mmWave service in Japan with Qualcomm. The service was aimed at offering the fastest possible multi-Gigabit download speeds in the country.