According to the data shared by Joe Barett, President of GSA, 186 operators in 48 countries are planning to develop 5g on the millimeter wave spectrum of 26-28ghz, 37-40ghz and 47-48ghz. 134 operators in 23 countries hold licenses and can carry out millimeter wave deployment. North America, Europe and Asia account for 75% of all spectrum deployment. Among them, 26-28ghz is the millimeter wave band most deployed and licensed, followed by 37-40ghz band, and UHF frequencies above 48ghz are still the focus of the industry.

In terms of millimeter wave equipment, as shown in the figure below, there are 134 kinds of millimeter wave equipment, an increase of 22 kinds compared with the beginning of 2021. Among the four key frequency bands of n257, n258, n260 and n261, manufacturers have released 33 / 20 / 56 / 58 kinds of millimeter wave equipment respectively, accounting for 13.5% of the total 5g equipment released. In terms of 5g millimeter wave commercial use, a total of 85 devices have been put into commercial use, an increase of 21 over the beginning of 2021, of which 38 are mobile phones, accounting for 45% of all commercial devices.

As we all know, millimeter wave and sub-6ghz band are important technologies of 5g. According to Xu Ying, R & D director of Qualcomm China, many traditionally regarded as mobility challenges faced by millimeter wave, such as limited coverage and high cost, only supporting line of sight transmission, only for fixed use cases, immature RFIC Technology, etc, Through more than 20 years of continuous R & D and innovation, it has been solved very well.

Mobile challenges faced by 5g millimeter wave (image source: Qualcomm)

For millimeter wave application scenarios, Xu stressed that not all application scenarios need millimeter wave coverage. The most important application scenarios can be summarized in four words: hot spot coverage, including enterprise indoor deployment, indoor / outdoor venues, transportation hubs, fixed wireless access, industrial Internet of things and other fields.

The most important application scenario of 5g millimeter wave is hot spot coverage (image source: Qualcomm)
"I often tell my colleagues that China is very suitable for millimeter wave applications, because China has a large population density and densely populated places such as airports, subway stations and stadiums are very suitable for millimeter wave applications." Taking the 2021 American football season finals as an example, Xu introduced Qualcomm's support for operators to conduct millimeter wave commercial testing in large stadiums. The data shows that the total traffic supported by 5g millimeter wave is 4.5tb, and the peak download speed of some scenes reaches 3gbps, which is 20 times the peak download speed of 4G LTE, and it is also the peak capacity and rate that sub-6ghz cannot achieve.
The 5g millimeter wave standard is still evolving. Integrated access and return (IAB), enhanced beam management, power saving characteristics, dual connection optimization, positioning and other functions are added to the completed R16 project. In R17 and future version projects, IAB support for distributed deployment, optimized network coverage and beam management, expanded spectrum support, new use cases other than embB Positioning and enhancement will become the focus.
However, although 5g millimeter wave has many advantages and many challenges on the way forward have been solved, Yang Ning, director of oppo standards research department, still pointed out that from the actual situation of China, the allocation of 5g millimeter wave basic resources, such as which frequency band can be tested? What frequency bands can operators deploy? It is still not clear enough, so the effect of promoting the industry is not significant.
Second, the typical disadvantage of millimeter wave is that the coverage is relatively limited. How to ensure the connection between network and terminal and overcome the disadvantage of limited coverage is a problem to be solved. At the same time, considering that millimeter wave has the advantages of large bandwidth and multiple antennas, it will bring challenges to the terminal, especially the heating and power consumption of the terminal. How to avoid the challenges caused by heating and power consumption from the perspective of technology is also an issue to be considered in the industrial development.
Third, for the overall deployment of 5g millimeter wave, whether on the network side or terminal side, the cost of devices and chips is still higher than that of sub-6ghz. How to reduce the cost of networks and terminals is also a challenge for the industry.
Liu Qi, director of the radio resources research department of the radio research center of China Academy of information and communications, supplemented it from the perspective of research. He pointed out that the first is to strengthen the supply of millimeter wave technology from the supply side. In terms of standards, in addition to 3GPP's 5g millimeter wave standard, we should also promote the standardization process of 5g applications, including core chips and devices, especially those with large millimeter wave bandwidth; The second is the demand side. "From the perspective of the industry, there is demand, but how to meet the demand of the industry through supply is the result of the joint efforts of both sides and even multiple parties. We need to jointly accelerate the standardization process to solve the problem of industry fragmentation."
Transferred from electronic engineering album