Page 60 - SAMENA Trends - September 2023

TECHNOLOGY UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

Ericsson Claims Open RAN Milestone

of open RAN. It stated it worked together with the industry through
the O-RAN Alliance to reach a critical milestone towards defining
the next-generation open fronthaul interface, required to bring
performance at scale to open RAN. The vendor stated it deployed
more than 1 million radios which are hardware ready for the next-
generation of open fronthaul technology. With the new radio
platforms released this year, it has a complete open RAN-ready
offering across its Massive MIMO and remote radio portfolios.
The company further claimed it is leading industrialization through
cloudification, open fronthaul and open management for network
programmability. Fredrik Jejdling, EVP and head of Networks, said
Ericsson believes the biggest revolution in future mobile networks
is the introduction of cloud-based open networks, which will
enable a move towards fully-programmable mobile networks. As
Ericsson committed to introducing compatibility for open fronthaul part of its ongoing push around open RAN, the company last week
across its cloud RAN and radio portfolio starting in 2024, a move it expanded a partnership Google Cloud to develop a hybrid cloud
claimed underlined its commitment to leading the industrialization platform to help operators optimize RAN infrastructure.

Near-Field Wideband Channel Estimation for Extremely Large-Scale MIMO

Extremely large-scale multiple-input-multiple-output (XL-MIMO) at Mingyao Cui (first author) and Prof. Linglong Dai (corresponding
millimeter-wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) bands plays an author) from Tsinghua University, China. In this article, a bilinear
important role in 6G networks for its extreme high beamforming pattern detection (BPD) based approach was proposed to accurately
gain and abundant spectrum resources. To unleash the superiority recover the high-frequency XL-MIMO channel. First, the bilinear
of XL-MIMO, accurate channel estimation is of great importance to pattern of the near-field beam split effect is revealed, which implies
perform efficient precoding. Unfortunately, as opposed to classical that the sparse support set of near-field channels in both the angle
5G massive MIMO, channel estimation for high-frequency XL- and distance domains can be regarded as a linear function against
MIMO in 6G faces a serious challenge of "near-field beam split." To frequency. Then, this bilinear pattern is used to estimate the angle-
elaborate, high-frequency XL-MIMO brings the qualitative paradigm of-arrival (AoA) and distance parameters of each near-field path
shift from conventional far-field planar-wave communications to component via a modified simultaneously orthogonal matching
its near-field spherical-wave counterpart. In addition, the ultra- pursuit algorithm. Finally, simulation results demonstrated their
large bandwidth at mmWave and THz make the electromagnetic scheme is capable of achieving high channel estimation accuracy
wavefront of different frequency components differ from each in all far-field/near-field/narrowband/wideband conditions. This
other, leading to the undesired beam split effect. The coupling of paper provides a solution to channel estimation in the presence
near-field and beam split effects gives rise to a complex structure of near-field beam split. It is expected that the bilinear pattern
of wireless channels, whose estimation is intractable for existing could be extended to various near-field wideband communication
methods. New research, titled "Near-Field Wideband Channel scenarios for addressing near-field beam split issues, such as
Estimation for Extremely Large-Scale MIMO," was published in reconfigurable intelligent surface communications and cell-free
Science China Information Sciences. It is co-authored by Mr. massive MIMO communications.

EE Confirmed to Have Carried Out First VoNR Call

EE, the mobile subsidiary of BT Group, is confirmed to have carried stated that EE has now moved ‘the vast majority’ of its mobile
out what is claimed to be the UK’s first call using voice-over-New subscriptions on to its new 5G-ready network core. In parallel, it
Radio (VoNR) technology. The development was revealed in a was reported that EE has continued to upgrade ‘many’ of its key
press release issued by BT Group regarding EE’s progress towards radio sites across the country, while it has also begun issuing 5G
5G Standalone (5G SA) technology, in which the company also SA-capable SIMs to end users.

60 SEPTEMBER 2023