The need to tap millimeter wave spectrum bands in support of 5G technology is altering traditional cellular deployment methods.
DALLAS – Spectrum remains one of the messy, yet essential, components towards the telecom market’s march towards “5G” with technology standards expected to tap into significantly larger swaths of spectrum from across the frequency strata in order to support the forecast performance requirements of mobile technology’s next evolution
Jumping off a point made by Daly in the potential use of spectrum bands higher than 60 GHz for short-range, line-of-sight backhaul, Paolini said such a model could make sense in support of small cell deployments where it’s possible a fiber line falls just short of an ideal location for a small cell. She added such an arrangement could also play back into her previous note on the ability to reuse those spectrum resources and thus the ability to support potential high backhaul needs.
However, the short reach of millimeter wave bands will likely require operators to also have a fallback layer of coverage using a lower spectrum band that could result in what Paolini termed a “pingpong effect” in which a device is constantly bouncing back and forth between two networks. Such an issue could impact the quality of service for the connection as well as cause undue overhead on both networks as they work to hand off device connectivity.
