Samsung Electronics America, Inc. announced its participation as a board member of the Advanced Wireless Research Initiative (AWRI), a public-private partnership spearheaded by the White House to accelerate the development of next generation 5G wireless networks in the United States. In conjunction with the initiative’s member companies and more than 400 university researchers, Samsung will contribute its expertise in wireless network architecture and mmWave radio access technologies to help lead in the research and testing of next generation mobile networks.
With the AWRI, Samsung will provide guidance and assist in the development of new wireless testbeds, enabling researchers to examine and validate 5G technologies, spectrum usage paradigms, application performance and service behavior. As a board member, Samsung will also provide direction on future research initiatives.
Other companies and associtations involved in the initiative include, but are not limited to, AT&T, CommScope, CTIA, HTC, Intel, InterDigital, Juniper Networks, National Instruments, Nokia, Oracle, Qualcomm, Sprint, T-Mobile, Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), Verizon and Vivai Solutions.
The National Science Foundation has pledged to invest more than $400 million over the next seven years in support of the initiative.
Huawei, along with Ericsson and Nokia Solutions and Networks, has signed on to extend a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the companies for the Operations Support System Interoperability Initiative (OSSii). The new MoU extents the duration and scope of OSSii to interfaces from IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) domain and MANO.
Huawei said the new MoU promotes integration of northbound interfaces from the core network and virtualized networks and facilitates multi-vendor interoperability for operations support system (OSS). The incorporation will further reduce time and costs required for multi-vendor interoperability for new services such as VoLTE, Huawei said.
AT&T has been selected by the Array of Things (AoT) to be the preferred provider of wireless connectivity for their smart city urban-sensing project.
The AoT project is designed to gather critical data about a city’s environment and infrastructure to ultimately help make that city more livable and more efficient.
Beginning with Chicago, the AoT plans to install hundreds of sensor-based nodes in the city to measure factors related to air quality, noise, climate, and traffic congestion. The data collected from the sensors will be transmitted in a highly secure manner over the AT&T wireless network to a central database server at the Argonne National Laboratory, where it will be processed and released openly to the public. Researchers, city services, and technology developers will be able to use the data to address energy efficiency, traffic safety, urban flooding, air pollution, and many more urban challenges.
Nokia and MTS have deployed FDD-TDD carrier aggregation technology on MTS’s commercial LTE network in Moscow to increase network coverage and capacity and improve the customer experience.
MTS’ subscribers can now experience data speeds of up to 187 Mbps, compared to peak speeds of 75 Mbps over FDD-LTE in the 10 MHz band and 112 Mbps over TD-LTE. The deployment also improves on the service quality of TD-LTE by enhancing service quality inside buildings.
Nokia and MTS have also conducted a demonstration of FDD-LTE three component carrier aggregation on the network in Moscow, with a plan to implement the technology in the future.