Javier Gozalvez

Mobile radio

5G Worldwide Developments

to expand later by utilizing the addi-

tional 4.5-GHz candidate band.
Note Vodafone and Huawei have com-
This will be my last “Mobile Radio” column after more than 16 years of ser-
pleted a 5G millimeter-wave (mm
vice as the mobile radio senior editor of IEEE Vehicular Technology Society
wave) field test in Newbury, United
News first and then IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine. It has been a plea-
Kingdom. The test covers single-user,
sure to serve the community in this role and contribute to the success of
with a strong reflection path to reach
this publication (now a first quartile Journal Citations Report publication). I
a 20-Gb/s UE peak rate and MU-MIMO
would like to thank all editors-in-chief (in particular James Irvine, who gave
for long-range UE to reach a 10-Gb/s
me the chance to join the editorial team), associate editors, and IEEE staff
peak rate. The companies state that
with whom I had the chance to work and receive their support. I hope that
it is the world’s first 5G outdoor field
you found useful the columns that tried to summarize the development of
test at E-Band reaching a 20-Gb/s
the mobile industry for the last 16 years. It has been a pleasure for me to
peak rate for a single-user device
produce them, and I wish you all success in your endeavours. Hasta pronto!
with high spectrum efficiency. E-Band
is mm wave and can be used as a
complementary spectrum band to the
lower band to deliver an ultrahigh
5G Trials and Proof of Concepts ment (UE) of both static and mobile mobile broadband user experience.

H uawei and NTT DOCOMO an-

nounced what they claim is the
world’s first fifth-generation (5G),
large-scale field trial in the 4.5-GHz
band using new numerology and
frame structure complying with the
Third Generation Partnership Project
(3GPP) 5G New Radio (NR) c ­ urrent
agreements. In the trial, 11.29  Gb/s
total user throughput and less than
0.5 ms one-way user plane latency
were achieved in the macrocell cov-
erage of a real urban application
­scenario in Yokohama, Japan. The mac-
rocell was made up of one base sta-
tion that worked in the 4.5-GHz band
with 200-MHz bandwidth, 64 trans-
ceivers, and 23 pieces of user equip-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MVT.2016.2641138
Date of publication: 22 February 2017
types. The trial combined multiuser
(MU), multiple-input, multiple-output
(MIMO) technology for simultaneous
multiple access and a precoding al-
gorithm that optimizes signals for
maximized performance and also
limits interuser interference. It
achieved a MU-MIMO transmission
of a maximum 79.82 b/s/Hz/cell.
From May or later in 2017, NTT
DOCOMO will commence delivery
of trial ­environments for 5G mobile
communications in Japan, working
in conjunction with various partners
in industries such as automobiles,
railways, and broadcasting. The
initial 5G trial sites will be offered
mainly in two districts of Tokyo, the
Odaiba waterfront and ­Tokyo Skytree
Town. NTT DOCOMO plans to uti-
lize the 28-GHz frequency band and
The two companies also announced
that they successfully tested 5G mo-
bile connectivity using high- and low-
frequency bands. The companies
have demonstrated 1.5-km cell cover-
age in the lower C-Band and a 5-Gb/s
peak throughput for a single user in
the high band. According to the compa-
nies, it is the world’s first 5G large-scale
mobility field test of macro coverage in
dense urban city scenarios.
Ericsson, SK Telecom, and Deutsche
Telekom announced that they will
deploy what they claim is the world’s
first transcontinental 5G trial network.
The three companies will deploy a
trial network in South Korea and
Germany that uses key 5G technolo-
gies such as network functions vir-
tualization (NFV), software-defined
infrastructure, distributed cloud, and

4 ||| 1556-6072/17©2017ieee IEEE vehicular technology magazine | March 2017

 network slicing. The principal aim is to
enable global reach for advanced 5G
use cases by optimizing user-roaming
experiences. Ericsson and SK Telecom
have also successfully completed
what they claim is the world’s first
demonstration of software-defined
­telecommunications infrastructure
(SDTI). SDTI refers to an infrastructure
platform where network components
such as the central processing unit,
memory, and storage are disaggregated
as customizable modules. As a result,
they can be dynamically composed
to meet the scale requirements of
various 5G services, while enabling
high-quality user experiences, faster
service rollout, and increased effi-
ciency. The demonstration used the Er-
icsson Hyperscale Datacenter System
8000 and focused on two use cases:
ultramicro-network end-to-end (E2E)
slicing for personalized services and
ultralarge-network E2E slicing for high-­
capacity processing.
NTT DOCOMO and Samsung
Electronics announced that they
have successfully achieved a data
speed of more than 2.5 Gb/s in a 5G
trial with a mobile device that was in
a vehicle traveling 150 km/h. During
the trial, transmissions were conducted
using the 28-GHz high-frequency band.
The companies state that, to date,
no test had achieved a successful
wireless data transmission to a fast-
moving device due to the large path
loss of high-frequency radio signals.
In this trial, the problem was over-
come with massive MIMO technolo-
gies that incorporate beamforming
and beam tracking.
Huawei and LG U+, a telecom oper-
ator in South Korea, have announced
the completion of a series of joint tests
based on three 5G commercial sce-
narios: enhanced mobile broadband,
ultrareliable and low-latency com-
munications, and massive-machine-
type communications (mMTC). In
these joint testing phases, spectral
efficiency demonstrated a noticeable
improvement with a cell peak rate
reaching 31 Gb/s supported on high-
frequency bandwidth and massive
MIMO. During the test procedures,
march 2017 | IEEE vehicular technology magazine ||| 5
Huawei and LG U+ verified key tech-
nologies of 5G NR. Simultaneously using
the short transmission time interval
and filtered orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing, latency was
reduced to 0.5 ms. An adoption of
sparse-code multiple access (SCMA)
allows for a significant increase in the
number of cell connections for mMTC.
Telia and Ericsson announced
that they conducted what they say is
the first 5G trial system in Europe.
The trial in Kista, Sweden, demon-
strated 5G capabilities in a real-world
environment over a live network and
included tests on speed and latency.
The system used 800 MHz of spec-
trum in the 15-GHz band. During the
test, peak rates of 15 Gb per user and
a latency below 3 ms were achieved.
Telefónica and Huawei have com-
pleted what they report as the world’s
first proof-of-concept (PoC), 5G, user-
centric and no-cell (UCNC), radio-ac-
cess-network (RAN) architecture
tested in their 5G Joint Innovation
Lab. UCNC is a novel radio-access
framework evolved from the clas-
sical cell-centric access protocol to
a user-centric protocol with hyper-
cell abstraction. UCNC can dramati-
cally reduce the over-the-air (OTA)
protocol signaling overhead and
access protocol latency as well as
increase the number of air-interface
connection links. UCNC also defines
the eco-state as a new device proto-
col state for sending short packets
directly without the need of OTA
signaling. Another key technology
is SCMA-based grant free access,
which can simplify uplink access
procedures to reduce latency and in-
crease the number of connected de-
vices. According to the results of the
PoC tests conducted, the number of
5G connections per cell increased
by 233%, the signaling overhead
decreased by 78%, and the latency
decreased by 95% compared with
state-of-the-art long-term evolu-
tion (LTE).
NTT DOCOMO and Ericsson an-
nounced their successful completion
of a joint PoC of dynamic network-
slicing technology for 5G core net-
works. Network-slicing technology
virtually partitions a physical net-
work into multiple coexisting logical
networks to provide the most suit-
able resources and network topology
to different types of services. In the
PoC, a slice-management function
and network slices based on service
requirements were autonomously
created, enabling widely varying ser-
vices to be delivered simultaneously
via multiple logical networks.
Ericsson and Vodafone have dem-
onstrated a new 5G PoC. The two
companies created a 5G Smart Net-
work Edge prototype including a 5G
ready core and demonstrated the
benefits of network slicing and dis-
tributed cloud technology using the
example of a machine-vision applica-
tion. Machine vision is increasingly
used for quality assurance within
manufacturing and production pro-
cesses and to measure or recognize
objects. In a typical setup, pictures
provided by high-speed cameras are
processed, analyzed, and trigger fur-
ther actions such as sorting out defect
parts. In the demo, both companies
showed how the 5G Smart Network
Edge enables much greater efficiency
for industry: due to reduced network
latencies the recognition rate of a
cloud-based face detection applica-
tion was increased, significantly less
video traffic had to be sent over the
wide area network, and sensitive
data was kept locally and was there-
fore better protected against unau-
thorized access.
5G News
Ericsson announced that it is commer-
cializing what it asserts is the world’s
first 5G NR for massive MIMO, with
the first deployments coming in 2017.
Together with the Ericsson 5G Plug-
Ins and its Radio System Baseband
5216, Ericsson claims to be the first to
deliver all components of a 5G access
network. AIR6468 combines advanced
antennas with a large number of steer-
able ports to enable 5G technologies
of beamforming, massive MIMO,
and—building on that—MU-MIMO.
These capabilities improve user
­ xperience while enhancing the
e AAS, which adopts beamforming,
capacity and coverage of the network
and reducing interference.
Qualcomm Technologies has in-
troduced its first 5G NR-spectrum-
sharing prototype system and trial
platform. This new prototype is based
on the company’s sub-6-GHz and
mm-wave, 5G, NR, E2E prototypes,
which include both base station and
UE. It supports wide radio-frequency
(RF ) bandwidths over 100 MHz,
capable of delivering multi-gigabit-
per-second data rates. It also sup-
ports a new integrated subframe
design for significantly lower OTA la-
tency than what is possible in today’s
fourth-generation (4G) LTE network.
The test bed is expanded to support
listen-before-talk (LBT) technolo-
gy, wide-band waveforms with low
latency, and enhancements in the
radio and network protocols.
Qua lcomm Technolog ie s a n -
nounced its Snapdragon X50 5G mo-
dem, making Qualcomm the first
company to announce a commercial
5G modem chipset solution. The
Snapdragon X50 5G modem will ini-
tially support operation in mm-wave
spectrum in the 28-GHz band. It will
employ MIMO antenna technology
with adaptive beamforming and beam
tracking techniques, which facilitates
robust and sustained mobile broad-
band communications in nonline-of-
sight environments. With 800-MHz
bandwidth support, the Snapdragon
X50 5G modem is designed to sup-
port peak download speeds of up to
5 Gb/s. It is designed to be used for
multimode 4G and 5G mobile broad-
band. The platform will include the
modem, the SDR051 mm-wave trans-
ceivers, and the supporting PMX50
power management chip. The first
commercial products that will inte-
grate it are expected to be available
during the first half of 2018.
NEC Corporation announced that
it has developed a prototype of a
massive-element (approximately 500
elements) Active Antenna System
(AAS) for base stations that sup-
ports the 28-GHz band. NEC’s simu-
lation trials of the newly developed
6 ||| IEEE vehicular technology magazine | march 2017
achieved up to 1 km in long-distance
communications in 16 respective di-
rections on 28-GHz high-RF bands, at
a communications speed of 30 Gb/s
or faster per cell and spectral effi-
ciency 20 times greater than LTE on
a per-communication area basis.
The European Commission pre-
sented a 5G action plan that foresees
a common European Union (EU)
calendar for a coordinated 5G com-
mercial launch in 2020 as well as joint
work with member states and indus-
try stakeholders to identify and allo-
cate spectrum bands for 5G, organize
pan-European 5G trials as of 2018, pro-
mote common global 5G standards,
and encourage the adoption of nation-
al 5G deployment roadmaps across
all EU member states. The Commis-
sion has also identified as a strategic
objective for 2025 that all urban areas
as well as major roads and railways
should have uninterrupted 5G cover-
age. As an interim target, 5G should
be commercially available in at least
one major city in each EU member
state by 2020. The Commission will
also work with member states to iden-
tify, by the end of 2016, a provisional
list of pioneer spectrum bands for
the initial launch of 5G services. The
list should include frequencies in at
least three ranges of the spectrum:
below 1 GHz, between 1 and 6 GHz,
and above 6 GHz. The Commission
will also work with member states to
agree, by end of 2017, on the full set
of spectrum bands (below and above
6 GHz) to be harmonized for the ini-
tial deployment of commercial 5G
networks in Europe. The 5G Action
Plan follows the publication of the
“5G Manifesto for timely deployment
of 5G in Europe” from key players in
the sector. The manifesto provides
recommendations for a common
vision and a calendar for the deploy-
ment of investments, standards, and
the synchronized introduction of ser-
vices in Europe. The Commission also
proposed a new European Electronic
Communications Code. For the first
time in EU law, the code introduces
basic broadband as universal service.
The code also looks at radio spec-
trum and proposes longer (minimum
25 years) licenses and common prin-
ciples for assignments deadlines. The
Commission also proposed a new ini-
tiative, WiFi4EU, to give all interested
local authorities the ability to offer
free Wi-Fi connections to any citizen.
With an initial budget of €120 million,
this new public-voucher scheme has
the potential to deliver connectivity
to thousands of public spaces, gener-
ating 40–50 million ­Wi-Fi connections
per day.
The latest edition of the Ericsson
Mobility Report forecasts that there
will be 550 million 5G subscriptions
in 2022. North America will lead the
way in uptake of 5G subscriptions,
with a quarter of all 5G mobile sub-
scriptions in 2022. Asia Pacific will
be the second fastest growing re-
gion for 5G subscriptions, with 10%
of all subscriptions being 5G in 2022.
The report also forecasts that, in
2022, there will be 8.9 billion mobile
subscriptions, of which 90% will be
for mobile broadband.
Strategy Analytics estimates that
5G commercial handset sales will be-
gin in 2020 and exceed 300 million by
2025. The firm believes 7% of mobile
connections will be 5G by 2025. In a
different report, iGR estimates that
5G connections will start slowly in
2021 and grow to 1.3 billion in 2026.
ABI Research forecasts that 5G in
the centimeter and mm-wave bands
will reach nearly US$200 billion in
cumulative service revenues by 2026
while LTE, LTE Advanced (LTE-A), and
LTE-A Pro exceed 5 billion subscrip-
tions. The firm estimates that in 2026,
the 5G subscriber base will account
for close to 5% of the market’s total.
Developed markets in North America
and Asia Pacific will lead the way for
5G services.
North America
The U.S. Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) has adopted new
rules for wireless broadband opera-
tions in frequencies above 24 GHz,
making the United States the first
country in the world to make this
spectrum available for next-­generation
wireless services. According to the
FCC, these rules set a strong founda-
tion for the rapid advancement to
next-generation 5G networks and
technologies in the United States. The
new rules open up nearly 11 GHz of
high-­frequency spectrum for flexible,
mobile, and fixed-use wireless broad-
band—3.85 GHz of licensed spectrum
and 7 GHz of unlicensed spectrum.
The rules adopted create a new Upper
Microwave Flexible Use service in the
28-GHz (27.5–28.35  GHz), 37-GHz (37–
38.6 GHz), and 39-GHz (38.6–40 GHz)
bands and a new unlicensed band at
64–71 GHz. In the licensed bands, the
rules make available 3.85 GHz of
licensed, flexible-use spectrum, which
is more than four times the amount of
flexible-use spectrum the FCC has
licensed to date. In the unlicensed
band, the rules make available 7 GHz
of unlicensed spectrum, which, when
combined with the existing high-band
unlicensed spectrum (57–64  GHz),
doubles the amount of high-band unli-
censed spectrum to 14 GHz of contigu-
ous unlicensed spectrum (57–71 GHz).
These 14 GHz will be 15 times as
much as all unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum
in the lower bands. The rules balance
different spectrum-access approach-
es, including exclusive use licensing,
shared access, and unlicensed access
to meet a ­variety of different needs
and use cases.
According to a new Global Sys-
tem for Mobile Communications As-
sociation (GSMA) study, “The Mobile
Economy: North America 2016,” North
America’s mobile industry will be
worth almost US$1 trillion a year to the
region’s economy by 2020. The report
forecasts that the industry will account
for 4.5% (US$1 trillion) of projected re-
gional gross domestic product (GDP)
by the end of the decade, up from 3.6%
(US$710 billion) last year. The report
indicates that the number of unique
mobile subscribers in the region is
expected to increase to 315 million
by 2020 from 284 million at the end of
2015. There were more than 60 million
cellular machine-to-machine (M2M)
connections in the region at the end
march 2017 | IEEE vehicular technology magazine ||| 7
of 2015, accounting for nearly 15% of
the total mobile c­ onnections, and the
report estimates that it will increase to
30% by 2020.
5G Americas announced that
North America has a 60% share of
the market for LTE technology (com-
pared to 30% in Western Europe).
Also, the penetration rate of LTE con-
nections to the population reached
74% in the region (against 39% in
Western Europe). The organization
announced also that there are 1.4 bil-
lion LTE connections out of a total of
7.5 billion total cellular connections
worldwide and that these will reach
close to 4 billion by year-end 2020
(without including M2M).
Research and Technology
SK Telecom and Nokia announced
that they have successfully imple-
mented what they claim is the world’s
first cloud-based, software-defined
RAN (SDRAN)—also known as Cloud
RAN—in a commercial network.
SDRAN is a next-generation, cloud-
based RAN and cloud base station
equipped with various information
technology (IT) technologies based
on open architecture. It is a new con-
cept in technology in the sense that
mobile communication functions are
turned into virtual machines to be
implemented on general-purpose
server and integrated within the
cloud. A functional split of the proto-
col in the baseband processing is the
architecture of SDRAN, and this rele-
gates parts of the digital unit (DU)
functions to the remote radio unit
(RRU). Until now, a designated inter-
face has been used for data transmis-
sion between the DU and the RRU, but
with the new SDRAN, a more broadly
used Ethernet-based, DU-RU interface
is optimized for the communication
environment and used for more effi-
cient network configuration. The
interface also better handles signal
delays, so that when a delay occurs, it
adjusts the timing of data transmis-
sion and prevents a slowdown in
transmission speed.
China Mobile Shanghai Branch
and Huawei have jointly deployed
what they claim is the world’s first
wide-band massive MIMO site. A single
module supports activation of three
carriers on 2.6 GHz. The distributed
network supports smooth evolution
to Cloud RAN architecture. The av-
erage spectral efficiency of the cells
can be improved by threefold. The
expedient delivery of this solution is
guaranteed as only one optical fiber
and one power cable are required to
ensure smooth deployment from an
engineering perspective.
NEC Corporation announced the
development of a radio sensing sys-
tem that measures the usage of radio
spectrum and visualizes its use in real
time. The system aims to promote
the effective usage of radio spec-
trum, such as the dynamic allocation
of radio spectrum for the Internet of
Things (IoT) and the allocation of ra-
dio spectrum for events or emergency
situations. The new system consists
of a small radio spectrum sensor and
software to visualize the status of radio
spectrum. In particular, NEC devel-
oped a micro-electromechanical-
systems-based tunable filter that
extracts only the radio signals at the
frequency to be measured from the RF
signals received by the antenna. The
sensor extracts only the radio signals
within a target frequency between
30 MHz and 3 GHz. According to NEC,
the system can perform measurements
with 100 times greater sensitivity than
existing technologies. The sensor can
even perform high-precision mea-
surements of weak RF signals in areas
that are close to transmitter ­stations
radiating strong radio signals. NEC re-
duced the size of the radio spectrum
sensor to the size of a smartphone by
combining functions to eliminate un-
necessary frequency signals and by
amplifying the desired frequency to
be measured into one chip. The radio
spectrum sensor can therefore be in-
stalled in places such as street lights
and building walls.
Huawei launched what they say
is the world’s first SG178 multiprobe
spherical near-field testing system,
supporting radiating characteristics
testing for base-transceiver-station
antenna during product develop-
ment and production. According to
Huawei, this testing system doubles
the test accuracy compared to in-
door far-field and near-field test
ranges, and it supports more antenna
types and wider frequency bands. In
addition, Huawei claims that it is the
only testing system in the industry to
support active antenna and massive
MIMO OTA tests. Huawei stated that
its unique SG178 testing system has
178 probes, achieves the industry’s
highest sampling density, and dou-
bles the test accuracy. It also boasts
a 20-fold increase in test e ­fficiency
compared to a far-field test range.
NEC Corporation announced a new
technology that utilizes geomagne-
tism to determine the exact location
of subjects inside of buildings, where
the frame and other steel materials
may interfere with global-positioning-
system (GPS) signals. Utilizing deep
learning, this technology estimates
the geomagnetic characteristics for
each floor of a building based on in-
door location information and geo-
magnetic information obtained by a
prior examination. Once the examina-
tion of a facility’s geomagnetic condi-
tion is complete, there is no need to
install specific devices indoors, such
as a beacon or wireless local area
network (WLAN). According to these
characteristics, it can determine the
location of a subject to within 2 m of
accuracy based on the geomagnetic
information obtained through a sen-
sor carried by the subject.
European Telecommunications
Standards Institute (ETSI) has an-
nounced the availability of the NFV
Release 2 specifications, delivering
requirements, interfaces, and infor-
mation models for NFV. NFV Release
2 incorporates 11 new group specifi-
cations, in addition to the many NFV
specifications already published.
These detail the various require-
ments, interface descriptions, and
information models enabling interop-
erability of solutions based on the
ETSI NFV architectural framework.
Release 2 outlines the necessary
functional requirements in relation
8 ||| IEEE vehicular technology magazine | march 2017
to a wide set of functional areas, such
as the management of virtualized re-
sources, the lifecycle management
of both network services and virtu-
alized network functions, network
service fault/performance manage-
ment, and virtualized resource ca-
pacity management.
ETSI’s Management and Orches-
tration (MANO) group has announced
the availability of its open source
MANO (OSM) Release ONE, an OSM
software stack closely aligned with
ETSI NFV. The OSM community aims
to deliver a production-quality OSM
stack that meets the requirements of
commercial NFV networks. Release ONE
substantially enhances interoperabil-
ity with other components—virtual
network functions (VNFs), virtualized
infrastructure managers (VIMs), and
software-defined network control-
lers—and creates a plug-in framework
to make platform maintenance and
extensions significantly easier to
provide and support. In addition,
Release ONE improves the admin-
istrator and developer experience
and provides extremely flexible VNF
configuration and advanced network-
ing management. To ensure that
OSM interoperates successfully with
multiple types of VIMs and NFV infra-
structures, the OSM group is building
a unique network of remote labs of-
fering different combinations of NFV
infrastructure and VIMs connected
over a virtual network.
IoT
Huawei and Janz CE announced that
the first electrical-energy smart meter,
using 4.5G narrow-band (NB), IoT
communication technology, has been
successfully tested. Huawei and Janz
CE have designed and manufactured
the new meter, using modules from
U-blox, EDP Distribuição, and NOS.
NB-IoT is the low-power, wide-area
(LPWA) wireless access technology
standardized by the 3GPP. Accord-
ing to the companies, it can support
more than 100,000 connections per
cell, a battery life of up to ten years,
and a gain of 20 dB over convention-
al GSM networks. Huawei has also
announced that the large-scale com-
mercialization of its E2E NB-IoT solu-
tion (including devices, base stations,
and the core supporting NFV) will
take place starting in the beginning
of 2017.
oneM2M announced the publica-
tion of a new landmark set of specifica-
tions, Release 2. The new specifications
open up the IoT ecosystem to devices
that lack the protocol and enable inter-
working among systems using AllSeen
Alliance’s AllJoyn, Open Connectiv-
ity Foundation’s Open Interconnect
Consortium, and the Open Mobile Al-
liance’s Lightweight M2M. Security
has also been addressed by enabling
E2E secure information exchange be-
tween any devices or servers as well
as implementing attribute and role-
based dynamic access control. Ap-
plication developers also now have
access to user-friendly application
programming interfaces and guide-
lines. The specifications can be found
at http://www.onem2m.org/technical/­
published-documents.
Huawei has released what it
claims is the mobile communications
industry’s first systematic ­metrics
for the connection ­experience of IoT
devices. Building IoT-ready networks
is a challenge for operators because
of the vast number of different IoT
applications and services. The meth-
odology includes an approach to
evaluating the quality of an IoT net-
work. Each use case is analyzed in
terms of availability, bandwidth, cov-
erage, delay sensitivity, and energy
efficiency. The combination of scores
across the five dimensions gives a
connection quality baseline for each
type of service: smart metering, con-
nected cars, industrial controls, etc.
Things coverage includes a series
of radio models, with different com-
binations of wireless connection
features, for different types of appli-
cation scenarios. These models are
then mapped onto network maps
showing where the various services
are needed. The maps will guide later
service provisioning based on key di-
mensions such as grid-level coverage
and battery life.
 Vodafone published its fourth
annual IoT Barometer Report. The
report found that 89% of companies
investing in IoT have increased their
budgets over the last 12 months and
that 63% of IoT adopters are seeing
“significant” returns on investment,
up from 59% in last year’s report.
The report also indicates that IoT
investment now accounts for 24% of
the average IT budget, on a par with
cloud computing or data analytics.
The International Data Corpora-
tion (IDC) estimates that organiza-
tions across Western Europe will
invest more than US$145 billion in
IoT hardware, software, services, and
connectivity in 2016. The company
also expects that Western European
IoT revenues will experience a com-
pound annual growth rate (CAGR) of
18.9% over the 2016–2020 forecast pe-
riod, reaching nearly US$290 billion
in 2020. The Western European indus-
tries leading the way in IoT invest-
ments are manufacturing, at US$28.7
billion in 2016, followed by utilities
and transportation at nearly US$18.0
and US$17.5 billion, respectively.
Looking across all Western European
use cases, manufacturing operations,
smart grid (electricity), freight moni-
toring, and smart home will receive
the greatest levels of investment.
ABI Research forecasts noncellu-
lar LPWA technologies from INGENU,
LoRa Alliance, SIGFOX, Sensus, and
Telensa will outnumber cellular LPWA
technologies by more than 12% in
2021. Cellular LPWA network tech-
nologies like NB-IoT and LTE M2M
will witness exponential connection
growth from 2018 onward as large
telecommunications companies up-
grade their networks in 2017. In a
previous report, the firm estimated
that the new 3GPP IoT standards will
account for more than 50% of cellu-
lar IoT radio node unit shipments by
2021 with NB IoT consuming more
than 70% of Release 13 shipments
and more than one third of all cel-
lular IoT shipments. ABI Research
estimates that IoT gateway ship-
ments will grow to exceed 64 million
units in 2021. Home automation and
march 2017 | IEEE vehicular technology magazine ||| 9
security market components will ac-
count for more than 50% of all IoT
gateway shipments over the next
five years. However, the firm expects
that the mobility and transporta-
tion segments, as well as industrial
and infrastructure, will generate the
most revenue.
A report released by GSMA Intel-
ligence and the China Academy of
Information and Communications
Technology estimates that China’s
M2M market will reach 1 billion con-
nections by 2020, with the majority
coming from the developing LPWA
market. The report highlights that
China is currently the world’s largest
M2M market with approximately 100
million cellular M2M c ­ onnections.
This value is expected to increase
to 350 million by 2020, with the addi-
tional 730 million connections com-
ing from LPWA ­technology.
4G
Qualcomm Technologies has success-
fully made what it claims is the
world’s first OTA connection via
MulteFire using LBT. MulteFire is a
next-generation mobile cellular tech-
nology based on LTE that operates
solely in the unlicensed spectrum. As
part of the test, Qualcomm demon-
strated that MulteFire can provide
LTE-like performance while fairly coex-
isting with Wi-Fi on the same 5-GHz
channel in the unlicensed spectrum.
MulteFire is based on 3GPP standards,
specifically Licensed Assisted Access
(LAA) in Release 13 for downlink and
enhanced LAA (eLAA) in Release 14
for uplink. eLAA technology increases
data speeds in both uplink and down-
link by aggregating licensed and unli-
censed spectrum to create a wider
data pipe in both directions. eLAA is
an evolution of LAA, which used the
unlicensed spectrum to boost the data
speed in the downlink direction only.
Similar to LAA and eLAA, MulteFire is
inherently designed to share the unli-
censed spectrum fairly with Wi-Fi and
other technologies by using the LBT
standard. The company also an­­
nounced, together with SK Telecom,
what they believe to be the first OTA
technology demonstration of eLAA
and LAA using the 2.6-GHz licensed
spectrum and 5-GHz unlicensed spec-
trum. When evaluating coexistence, a
baseline was first established using
only Wi-Fi users, of which some were
then switched from Wi-Fi to LAA/eLAA
while others remained on Wi-Fi. The
trial demonstrated that the users that
remained on Wi-Fi were unaffected by
those that switched to LAA/eLAA. LAA
and eLAA were shown in multiple test
cases to achieve twice the capacity in
5 GHz than the Wi-Fi only baseline.
Access Technologies (Alphabet),
Federated Wireless, Intel, Nokia, Qual-
comm, and Ruckus Wireless (now
part of Brocade) announced the launch
of the Citizens Broadband Radio Service
(CBRS) Alliance to develop, market,
and promote LTE-based solutions utiliz-
ing the shared spectrum of the U.S.
3.5-GHz CBRS band. Other companies
like Airspan Networks, AT&T, Ericsson,
and ZTE joined later.
Telstra, Qualcomm Technologies,
Ericsson, and NETGEAR have worked
together to develop what they state
is the world’s first Gigabit Class LTE
mobile device, and the first Gigabit
Class LTE commercially ready net-
work. Gigabit Class LTE download
speeds are achieved through a com-
bination of three-times carrier ag-
gregation, four-by-four MIMO on two
aggregated carriers plus two-by-two
MIMO on the third carrier, and a
256—quadrature-amplitude-modu-
lation higher order modulation.
Nokia, Finnish Broadcasting Com-
pany, Yle, and Qualcomm Incorporat-
ed announced that they conducted
what they claim is the world’s first
demonstration of the LTE Supple-
mental Downlink (SDL) technology
in a TV broadcast band. LTE SDL
uses the concept of flexibility in the
ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) broad-
cast band to deliver advanced media
services to tablets and smartphones
without creating interference to ex-
isting digital terrestrial television
services in the band. The demon-
stration is in line with the proposal
made by the European Commission
to introduce a flexibility option in
the 470–790 MHz (lower-UHF) band,
which is currently used by digital-
video-broadcasting (DVB) networks
and by wireless microphones using
the gaps between DVB channels.
Public Safety Communications
Inmarsat, Deutsche Telekom, Nokia,
and Thales have successfully con-
ducted a program of test flights of
the European Aviation Network
(EAN) in the United Kingdom. The
EAN is an integrated satellite and air-
to-ground network, planned for intro-
duction in mid-2017. During the
tests, the systems performed multi-
ple successful handovers between
sectors and cell towers, and they
maintained a stable connection. The
transfer of data to and from the air-
craft was also tested. Deutsche Tele-
kom and Nokia also achieved what
they claim is the first EAN live OTA
connection. The connection required
adapting Nokia’s LTE base stations
and remote radio heads to the fre-
quency used for EAN, provided by
Inmarsat, and building a specific
base station antenna to cover the
sky. The LTE ground network for EAN
differs from normal LTE networks as
it needs to work at speeds of up to
1,200 km/h at cruising altitudes,
requiring cells of up to 150 km. Nokia
will manage the operations for this
network from its global delivery cen-
ter in Romania.
The 3GPP Service and System As-
pects (SA) plenary approved a study
item to investigate the requirements for a
new railway communication system,
as a successor to the GSM-Railway
(GSM-R) service. The GSM-R is an ad-
aptation of GSM technology to suit the
railways’ needs for communication.
To have a successor technology in
place by 2020 for trials and by 2022 for
deployment, the International Railway
Union has published a user-require-
ment specification in their paper “Fu-
ture Railway Mobile Communication
System (FRMCS).” Triggered by this,
the 3GPP Working Group SA1 has
started a first study that paves the
way to identify which FRMCS require-
ments are in the working scope of
10 ||| IEEE vehicular technology magazine | march 2017
3GPP and to complete a gap analysis
of existing functionality in Release
14—to identify the work needed in
3GPP Release  15. When complete,
SA1 will have identified the norma-
tive 3GPP work needed to make the
FRMCS a success.
Nokia is to support Europe’s first
dedicated testing facility at Twente
Airport for the use of unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAV) for traffic man-
agement. Nokia’s UAV Traffic Man-
agement (UTM) system will provide
the flight automation, no-fly zone
control, and beyond-visual-line-of-
sight capability. Drones equipped
with Nokia’s UTM modem (compris-
ing an LTE modem, GPS transceiver,
and other telemetry modules) will
monitor airspace and flight paths,
and they can also handle the ex-
change of telemetry data as well as
establishing dynamic no-flight zones.
Qualcomm Technologies and
AT&T have tested unmanned air-
craft systems (UAS), or drones, on
commercial 4G LTE networks. The
trials analyzed how UAS can operate
safely and more securely on com-
mercial 4G LTE and networks of the
future, including 5G. The research
is looking at elements that would
impact future drone operations. In
particular, the team is looking at
coverage, signal, strength, and mo-
bility across network cells and how
they function in flight. The goal of
the trials and ongoing research is
to help enable future drone opera-
tions, such as Beyond Visual Line of
Sight, as regulations evolve to per-
mit them. The ability to fly beyond
an operator’s visual range could en-
able successful delivery, remote in-
spection, and exploration. The UAS
trials are based on the Qualcomm
Snapdragon Flight drone develop-
ment platform.
The Mission Critical Communica-
tions Alliance has been formed. The
Alliance is a global collaboration of
mobile operators, national and local-
level public authorities, and first-
response agencies to formalize
standards in the use of LTE for pub-
lic safety. More than ten leading ser-
vice providers and agencies such
as Mobile Radio Center from Japan
and Vodafone Hutchison ­Australia are
participating in the Alliance p
­ rogram.
Industry Forecasts and Surveys
According to Strategy Analytics, glob-
al smartphone shipments grew 6%
annually to reach 375 million units in
the third quarter (Q3) of 2016. Sam-
sung maintained first position with
20% of the global smartphone market
share, followed by Apple, Huawei,
and OPPO. The Android operating
system captured a record 88% of the
global market share. In a different
report, the IDC indicated that ven-
dors shipped a total of 362.9 million
smartphones worldwide in Q3 2016.
The shipments grew 5.3% from
344.7  million in the second quarter
(Q2) of 2016. GfK also forecasted that
the global smartphone demand will
total 1.4 billion units in 2016. A year-
on-year increase of 7% will be driven
by a 15% growth in China.
ABI Research estimates that out-
door small cells will experience a
38% CAGR through 2021. The firm ex-
pects the number of LTE small cells
shipped to double in 2016 and to grow
by a similar factor each year after.
In 2021, the value of LTE small cells
equipment will represent almost 70%
of the small cell equipment market.
According to IDC, the combined
consumer and enterprise worldwide
WLAN market segments increased
6.7% year over year in Q2 2016 and
increased 6.7% on a sequential basis.
The enterprise segment grew 9.4%
year over year in Q2 2016, represent-
ing its strongest growth in over two
years. The 802.11ac standard has
achieved market domina nce a nd
now accounts for 59.9% of depen-
dent-access-point-unit shipments
and 77.4% of dependent-access-point
revenues. Consumer WLAN market
revenue saw growth for the first
time since 2014, increasing 3.1% on a
year-over-year basis in Q2 2016. The
adoption of the 802.11ac standard in
the consumer market has been sig-
nificantly slower than in the enter-
prise segment.
 IDC estimates that worldwide mo-
bility revenues will grow from US$1.5
trillion in 2016 to more than US$1.7
trillion in 2020. Mobility revenues will
primarily come from consumer and
enterprise purchases of hardware
[e.g., smartphones, portable person-
al computers (PCs), and tablets] and
services (e.g., connectivity services).
Software revenues will experience
double-digit growth over the forecast
period, with the strongest growth
coming from investments in mobile
application development platforms
­ A new GSMA Intelligence study,
and ­mobile enterprise applications
and ­security.
New data released by Internation-
al Telecommunication Union (ITU)
show that 3.9 billion people remain
cut off from the vast resources avail-
able on the Internet, despite falling
prices for information and commu-
nications technology (ICT) services.
The “ICT Facts & Figures 2016” report
shows that developing countries
now account for the vast majority of
Internet users, with 2.5 billion users
compared with 1 billion in developed
countries. But Internet penetration
rates tell a different story, with 81%
in developed countries, compared
with 40% in developing countries
and 15% in the least developed coun-
tries. The ITU report reveals that
mobile phone coverage is now near
ubiquitous, with an estimated 95%
of the global population—or about 7
billion people—living in an area cov-
ered by a basic 2G mobile network.
LTE networks have spread quickly
over the last three years and reach
almost 4 billion people. Globally, the
total number of mobile broadband
subscriptions is expected to reach
3.6 billion by the end of 2016.
The GSMA released its “Global
Mobile Trends” report in which it
forecasts that more than 1 billion
additional people worldwide will be
connected to mobile networks by
2020, with approximately a third of
these new users coming from India
(China is forecast to add more than
200 million subscribers). Today, 46%
of the global population is using mo-
march 2017 | IEEE vehicular technology magazine ||| 11
bile phones to access the Internet,
a figure forecast to increase to 60%
by 2020. The study also indicates
that smartphones may now be the
most commonly owned consumer
electronics device. Revenue from
mobile services worldwide is fore-
cast to grow by around 2% annually
through to 2020. It is projected that
annual revenue from voice, short
message service, and mobile data
combined will surpass US$1.5 tril-
lion by 2020.
“The Mobile Economy: India 2016,”
noted that at the end of June 2016,
616 million unique users had sub-
scribed to mobile services in India,
making it the second-largest mobile
market globally, with almost 1 bil-
lion unique mobile subscribers ex-
pected by 2020. India also overtook
the United States in 2016 to become
the world’s second-largest smart-
phone market with an installed base
of 275 million devices. The number
of third generation (3G) and 4G mo-
bile broadband connections in India
is forecast to reach more than 670
million by 2020, 48% of the total con-
nection base. The number of 4G con-
nections is forecast to grow rapidly,
growing from just 3 million at the
end of 2015 to 280 million by 2020.
A new GSMA study, “The Mobile
Economy: Africa 2016,” highlights
the increasing contribution of Afri-
ca’s mobile industry to the regional
economy. The report finds that there
were 557 million unique mobile sub-
scribers across Africa at the end of
2015, equivalent to 46% of the con-
tinent’s population. Africa’s three
largest markets—Egypt, Nigeria, and
South Africa—together accounted
for around a third of the total sub-
scriber base. The number of unique
mobile subscribers is forecast to
reach 725 million by 2020, account-
ing for 54% of the expected popula-
tion. Mobile broadband (3G/4G) is
expected to account for almost two-
thirds by 2020. By mid-2016, there
were 72 live 4G networks in 32 coun-
tries across Africa. The use of mobile
technologies and services across
Africa generated US$153 billion in
economic value last year, equivalent
to 6.7% of the region’s GDP. This con-
tribution is expected to increase to
US$214 billion by 2020 (7.6% of ex-
pected GDP).
Other News
Qualcomm Incorporated and NXP
Semiconductors announced a defini-
tive agreement under which Qual-
comm will acquire NXP. NXP is a
leader in high-performance, mixed-
signal semiconductor electronics,
with innovative products and solu-
tions and leadership positions in
automotive, broad-based microcon-
trollers, secure identification, net-
work processing, and RF power. NXP
also has leading positions in automo-
tive infotainment, networking, and
safety systems.
Nokia issued their “Nokia Threat
Intelligence Report—H1 2016,” re-
vealing that smartphone infections
nearly doubled between January
and July compared to the latter half
of 2015, with smartphones account-
ing for 78% of all mobile network in-
fections. Android smartphones were
the most targeted mobile platform,
accounting for 74% of all malware
infections compared to Window/PC
systems (22%), and other platforms,
including iOS devices (4%).
Ofcom has plans to auction
190 MHz of spectrum in the 2.3 and
3.4-GHz bands in 2017 in the United
Kingdom. The 40 MHz of spectrum
to be sold in the 2.3-GHz band is al-
ready supported by certain mobile
devices. The 150 MHz of spectrum
to be sold in the 3.4-GHz band is not
currently used by most mobile devic-
es. The 3.4-GHz band has also been
identified as central to the rollout of
5G across Europe. Ofcom plans to
release further spectrum for mobile
use. These airwaves include frequen-
cies in the 700-MHz band. Another
potential source of future mobile
spectrum is the 3.6–3.8-GHz band.