The ENCQOR 5G Academic Technology Development Program partners researchers at Ontario-based post-secondary institutions with ENCQOR 5G Anchor Firms on 5G technology development projects. Areas of research interest are defined by Challenge Statements submitted to OCE by the ENCQOR 5G Anchor Firms and posted to the OCE website on a rolling basis.
Because of the ever-growing traffic demand in cellular networks additional radio spectrum for mobile communication is needed.
With the amount licensed radio spectrum being limited, 3GPP started investigating the use of license-exempt spectrum with LTE and 5G technology.
• Termed 6 GHz band, several countries are studying if the 5.925 GHz to 7.125 GHz band could be made available for licenseexempt use. Whereas, use of the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz licenseexempt spectrum has been dominated by IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi), the new 6 GHz spectrum is a greenfield band that many dissimilar technologies will occupy as soon as the band
becomes accessible.
• When operating in license-exempt spectrum, radio devices need to employ coexistence mechanisms that help to efficiently share the spectrum among their own and dissimilar technologies to reduce the interference that may cause a radio communication signal to
fail.
• One such mechanism is Listen-Before-Talk (LBT) that senses the radio channel for other transmissions. If found, a device defers from occupying the radio channel since multiple, simultaneous transmissions cause interference.
• To avoid such interference, it has been proposed that devices could defer from transmitting if the energy that exceeds a certain threshold is detected in the radio channel. (energy detection method for coexistence)
• A different mechanism, the preamble detection method for coexistence, is used in IEEE 802.11. IEEE 802.11 devices which search for the IEEE 802.11 ‘preamble signal’. When an IEEE 802.11 device detects an IEEE 802.11 preamble signal the device behaves
more carefully and act less aggressively. However, the IEEE 802.11 preamble signal can be easily missed as this method of coexistence has not been improved upon in the 20 years since it was developed.
• Various entities have claimed that coexistence between dissimilar technologies would be improved if all technologies operating in the 6 GHz band were forced to implement the IEEE 802.11 preamble signal. However, this idea has been disputed because of limits to the preamble’s robustness and detectability. Since today’s networks are much more dense and employ many more devices than when this method was developed at the end of the last century, Ericsson is interested in working with an academic partner
to determine if the preamble signal method of coexistence meets modern needs.