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Massive multiple-input and multiple-output (MMIMO) has been an incredibly fast-moving technology. Only three years ago, MMIMO was a new solution in the infrastructure market that certain players were betting on as the right technology to advance 5G. However, few organizations had experience with it and the broader industry wasn’t sure it was the right solution because it hadn’t yet been validated.

Today, MMIMO has proven itself as the optimal technology for 5G deployments: It has become the predominant method of deployment (over 50% of cases) for the 5G macro network. And it’s only becoming more essential to the future of telecoms infrastructure, considering the capacity and performance needed by the next generation of 5G.

The rate of data demand continues to increase exponentially; reports estimate that demand is doubling every 24 to 30 months. As capacity requirements for the next evolution of 5G continue to expand, reliance on MMIMO to carry capacity further is increasing, reinforcing that MMIMO was the right technology for the industry to invest in.

MMIMO and 5G’s challenges

Because MMIMO is so widely adopted, we can learn from existing deployments to understand where the technology excels, and how it can be improved and continue to evolve. One challenge is continuing to expand capacity while optimizing existing sites and decreasing the need for new sites.

It’s a huge expense for operators to introduce new sites for coverage: From licensing to regulations and cost of installation, there are many requirements and burdens on the operator. Furthermore, with the mass deployments of 5G infrastructure, OEMs need to serve base stations faster than ever. Each deployment also has differing requirements for the base stations, depending on the operator.

Addressing this challenge requires a breadth of technological options to serve the differing needs, as well as the scale of operations to meet the demand. Furthermore, telecom operators are careful to ensure that all aspects of hardware work together properly for optimal performance.

Another complication is that as existing sites are loaded with newer radios, there’s more interference taking place. A cell tower has limited real estate to utilize for 4G LTE and 5G networks. So, entirely new radio hardware must be added to operate standalone 5G radios at that site, creating a footprint and real estate issue at that tower.

Not only do operators need to ensure that base stations can fit at the top, but they must also deal with the issue of crowding: Multiple radios operating on different bands will create electrical noise and interfere with each other, causing decreased efficiency. Wind-loading can also be an issue, where the mechanical safety at the site could be compromised by adding more hardware to it.

At higher frequencies, MMIMO is the best technology for creating coverage with maximum utilization of the operator’s existing footprint. Solutions for MMIMO can be integrated to make them more efficient so that the mechanical design becomes smaller, more compact and more energy efficient. This allows the cellular radios to be more compact within the same footprint (both physically and thermally).

This also offers a few ancillary benefits, including reducing the cost of the installation. Additionally reducing size and complexity allows operators to focus more space, energy and money on performance to push their sites to the next level.

These operators can also more easily afford to utilize new hardware that’s immune to out-of-band interference. Such solutions are less affected by the crosstalk between radios, while their specific designs make them more robust against out-of-band blockers that suppress RF signals.

The next stage

In the U.S., data growth is accelerating. Some in the telecom industry are noting that more capacity will be needed beyond the current 5G deployments. In the next four years, we will need to think about that issue and introduce the next evolution of the standard with new spectrum. Some papers are already exploring the feasibility of introducing another spectrum between 7-20 GHz.

Regarding 6G and 5G A (advanced), the industry is already starting to think about the evolution of the standard itself.

Because of the fast pace of innovation and high rate of market penetration, this technology is ripe for disruption and optimization—and operators are eager to move into higher frequencies and more bandwidths. The focus on integration and consolidating complexity, with higher efficiency and wider bandwidths, will be even more important in this context. How would we build infrastructure for that new spectrum, and how will we operate wider bandwidth and even higher frequencies to achieve Ultra Capacity? For starters, having even more radios at a site means that we will need to continue improving efficiency and achieving smaller form factors.

From generation to generation, the demands for these network systems are primarily on higher performance. Constraints to the footprint of the network force operators to maximize operations and push as much performance out of each base station as possible. This means new technologies to further improve efficiencies in size and power without compromising speed or reliability.

Technology innovators will help the telecom industry proceed to 6G and further by continuing to tackle the complexity and challenge of integration so that the ecosystem implementers and OEMs can quickly move into these uncharted territories, navigating new deployment requirements while being efficient and effective.

—Tom Valencia is senior manager of Applications Engineering at Skyworks.