In this chapter we shall see some of the key features of 5g NR and NG-RAN
1. Small Cell
2. Increased Spectrum
3. Radio Enhancements
4. Cloud RAN
5. Dual Connectivity
6. Beam Forming and Steering.
7. Network Slicing
1. Small Cell
Small Cell concept is directly connected to Dual Connectivity concept.
A small cell is a tower that has a limited connectivity. It might range form 10m to 2 km.
They are used to increase coverage inside office or big buildings.
They have 5G air interface to provide high data rate.
2. Dual Connectivity
In dual connectivity, UE will be connected to 2 NodeB’s.
One will act as master and other will act as secondary. Here master NodeB will decide about the QOS for the UE.
Master NodeB will be connected with secondary NodeB to provide those services.
3. Increased Spectrum:
5G NR can operate in 2 frequency.
450 to 6000 MHz
24250 to 52600 MHz
So below is how the spectrum is used:
Below 1Ghz: Good network inside the buildings, limited spectrum availability.
1 to 6 Ghz: Good Coverage and good spectrum availability.
6 to 100 Ghz: Limited coverage, very high bandwidth.
4. Cloud RAN technology CRAN
In CRAN there are 2 components:
Centralized Unit (CU): It will handle computational tasks like security, scheduling etc.
Distributed Unit (DU): It will be near to the UE, collective of multiple gNB DU will be connected to one gNB CU.
7. Network Slicing
As we say in previous chapter of 5G use cases eMBB, uRLLC, mMTC. The network will be sliced accordingly to provide these services.