Prototyping Our Way to 5G Reality

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Electronic Design
Mike Santori
Fri, 2015-10-16 11:55

In past articles, Ive written quite a bit about the Internet of Things (IoT). Theyve
centered around how you and your company need to adopt a platform-based test
approach to prepare for the test challenges caused by the rapid change in device
capabilities and integration of many technologies. I havent, however, talked much about
the technologies driving and enabling the IoT.
With the introduction of the iPhone, wireless data became an indispensable part of
everyday life for many. The transformational impact of the Mobile Internet seemingly
came out of nowhere, as others quickly followed Apples lead and introduced highly functional smart devices.
We reveled in all of the new and useful things we could do with our mobile devices.
Related
New Instruments Target 5G Testing
Communications Test Market Booms as Carriers Prepare for IoT and 5G
How Nimble Is Your IoT Approach?
Who still carries an iPod or even stores music on their phone anymore? I certainly dont. I just use Spotify to
stream my music of choice; I now have more than 20 million songs at my fingertips, whether Im sitting in a
coffee shop or driving across West Texas on vacation. Furthermore, I can FaceTime my daughter while she is
away at college, even if she happens to be walking down 2nd Avenue in Manhattan when I call.
Im sure Im just like you in that I take all of this technological innovation we have in 2015 for granted. But Im
also sure that you share my aggravation when it doesnt work the way you want it tolike when my phone
shows five bars of signal strength and the availability of LTE, but a simple text message wont go through (Fig.
1). Those are the times when I wonder how were ever going to support the estimated 50 billion devices by 2020
that will somehow connect and exchange our exabytes (thats billions of gigabytes) of data.
Todays 4G networks that incorporate the latest wireless
technologies continue to provide us with faster, more reliable
data access. Still, the road ahead beyond LTE and LTE-A is
far from paved. Rapid consumption of wireless data
continues to outpace the industrys ability to meet the
burgeoning demand, but faster data and greater access are
only part of the story.
The Mobile Internet has painted a picture of continued

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Prototyping Our Way to 5G Reality

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innovation, inspiring researchers all over the world to think

beyond faster data and greater capacity. These new
networks, referred to as fifth generation, or 5G, promise to
transform our lives, yet again.
Addressing Real-World Challenges
Defining 5G has created lots of excitement, with much of that
attention centered on faster data rates. However, 5G has a
much broader agenda. In addition to faster data rates, 5G
will accommodate significantly more connected users and
devices (100X or more) and aim to reduce network latency.
Solving these less publicized challenges is key to unlocking
the IoTs enormous potential.
The research today to address 5G challenges is already
showing promise, but the road ahead is long. Given the
broad range of needs and objectives, there are many ideas
currently undergoing research around the world.
Technologies such as new 5G waveforms, network densification, massive MIMO, and mmWave
communications may be incrementally deployed along a time curve, and as such, are not mutually exclusive and
may be complimentary (Fig. 2). These 5G technologies are moving forward and the vision of an Internet for
everyone and everything comes closer to reality every day.
Whats particularly exciting to me is that the goals of 5G arent simply to optimize a technical specification like
peak bandwidth. Its about solving real-world issues of connectivity, speed, reliability, capacity, and the like.

To prove out potential technologies, researchers need the tools to design and rapidly prototype their concepts
faster to expedite time-to-market, and ultimately time-to-deployment. With the complex conditions in which we
want wireless communications to work, researchers cant simply work in the mathematical world, running
simulations. They need the ability to actually prototype their technologies and test them under real-world
conditions to see how they perform outside of the laboratory.
Prototyping: An Essential 5G Research Approach
NI has had the great opportunity over the last few years to work with researchers from leading companies and
universities around the world, including Nokia, Samsung, Intel, TU Dresden, and NYU Wireless. These

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ganizations are already working to advance 5G technologies by prototyping real-world systems.

Prototyping a wireless-communications system is a daunting technical undertaking, even more so when the
technologies involved are in research and dont actually exist in existing tools and products. While the
mathematical modeling and simulation of communications algorithms is straightforward enough, getting those
algorithms to execute on a real-time target with high-performance I/O isnt so easy.
To innovate faster than their competition, researchers need every advantage possible. That means leveraging IP
from previous research and leveraging a hardware and software platform that lets them build on an existing
infrastructure and not have to start from scratch. It also means they need a platform that seamlessly melds
algorithm design and physical prototyping, with tight integration to hardware targets that can meet the
demanding needs of wireless communication.
NI developed and has continuously evolved a design, test, and prototyping platform based on the LabVIEW RIO
architecture. It tightly integrates our LabVIEW graphical system design software with high-performance
hardware that includes FPGAs for demanding computational and I/O aspects. This approach is enabling
researchers to focus on developing their ideas and quickly try them out in the real world, as opposed to relying
only on simulations or trying to create custom hardware to run their algorithms.

As just one example, Nokia and NI recently collaborated to develop the fastest cellular 5G technology ever
prototyped at peak speeds of 10 Gb/s, which is 40 times faster than 4G technology (Fig. 3). To provide a frame
of reference, a user can download a two-hour HD video in 40 minutes using todays highest-speed networks in
good conditions; with this demonstrated speed of 10 Gb/s, a user could download this same video in under a
minute.
The Road to Reality
Were seeing 5G technologies move forward to address todays wireless-communications challenges, and the

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ion of an Internet for everyone and everything comes more in focus every day. As with any new wireless
technology, the transition from concept to prototype impacts the time to actual deployment and
commercialization. The faster researchers can build 5G prototypes, the faster these designs can be
mass-manufactured and tested, and most importantly, the sooner we can take advantage of the faster data rates,
decreased latency, and reliable connectivity.
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