DESIGN
EW: REDCAP
Everyone wants to use the latest technology. For communications, that means 5G, and even people who have scant understanding of technology and relatively modest demands will want to see the 5G symbol appear on their phone. And they are prepared to pay for it. T hat’s fine for phone users for whom their smart device has become their primary interface with the connected But again, on the other hand, 5G includes a lot of other nice features that LTE did not – low latency, time sensitive networks, point-to-point communications. Many of these capabilities target industrial and IoT applications. Does your IoT application need low-cost mobile broadband that’s here to stay? (RedCap: 5G for the IoT at a third of the cost)
world. If you are handling your finances on your phone, paying in supermarkets, holding video conferences, accessing streaming services, even booking an Uber, you need the fastest access possible. But there are many other applications that require Internet access, but which do not need this high level of performance. One might be tempted to say, 'OK, well there is always 4G/LTE'. But that’s just the point, we know that 4G/ LTE only has a limited life span. The exact timing is not known, but the first 4G LTE sunset announcements could be made as early as 2030. For those looking to introduce industrial automation in smart factories using a connected network of industrial sensors, for example, five or even ten years is not a long time. And yet 5G – which certainly will have longevity – is probably an overkill solution for many IoT applications. If you are not looking to stream video, then you don’t need 5G’s blistering speed which will cope with gigabits per second of throughput in the downlink and uplink. Why pay for capabilities you don’t need and won’t use? There’s also another issue – design complexity. 5G designs are not simple to implement; there are a lot of design considerations and decisions to be made around the silicon, RF modulation, baseband processing and more – essentially issues that become much more challenging at the high speeds that 5G delivers.
It is into this space that the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) consortium – the body of seven national or regional telecommunication standards organisations and other stakeholders in the communications ecosystem focused on developing mobile communications protocols – have released a new category of 5G. 5G NR Release 17 introduces ‘RedCap’ (Reduced Capability, also known as NR-Light), which is a platform positioned to applications that do not need the extreme speeds offered by ‘full’ 5G, but which do need a stable connection, fast response time, and the assurance of a long installed life. By decreasing the speed, many of the design complexity challenges are removed, power consumption is significantly reduced leading to increased battery life, device footprint is smaller, and parts can be much more cost effective – coming in at around one third the price of ‘classic’ 5G. RedCap-enabled systems deliver speeds of 220Mbps (downlink) and 100Mbps (uplink). Design optimisations include: • Narrower bandwidths – 20MHz in <7GHz
By Mads Fischer, European Sales Director, SIMCom
• Single transmit and receive antennas
22 ELECTRONICSPECIFIER.COM
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