Antenna choice in 5G strategy

The global trends give 2025 5G services spread for 65% of the world population, but only 30M subscription in sub saharan Africa.

In 2020, number of African countries Telecom Operators have already selected and engage with suppliers for 5G.

The biggest challenges remain:

• Spectrum availability,

• Network upgrade costs,

• Devices availability,

• Lack of application use cases in the first 5G releases,

• Users awareness and low ARPU.

Impact on Antennas Technology:

More capacity is the basis for 5G, which supposes more bandwidth, and antennas with better efficiency.

The need of more capacity implies as well new high bands, which implies new SINR for the antennas.

The New high bands will result in link budget issues, which can partially be resolved by activation of MU MIMO.

Beamforming is now a necessity.

WRC ITU Sharm El Sheiq November 2019 completed the previous WRC 15, with WRC 19.

The frequency bands for WRC 15 are:

• C Band (3.4 - 3.6 GHz)

• L Band (1427 - 1518 MHz)

• 700 Band (694 - 790 MHz)

The frequencies for WRC 19,

• AI 1.13: IMT future bands from 24.25 until 86 GHz.

• AI 1.16: WAS/RLAN vs Mobile services between 5150 and 5925 MHz.

Phase shift effect:

The phase shift effect which can be produced from analog phase shifters, will play a role in the beam direction θ.

Analog, Digital and Hybrid Beam Forming:

Below figure shows the various RAN chain from Baseband to antennas.

Beam forming antennas selection factors:

Below is an approach on what could be the selection factors for Beam Forming antennas.

Spectrum effects cannot escape to physics laws !!

Clutter and Terrain decision factors will impact strongly the selection of beam forming antennas type.

Active and Hybrid versus Passive beam forming antennas?

There is no winners actually. It should be selected wisely, keeping in mind three criterias:

• The Spectrum,

• The Terrain,

• The Cost and revenues.