Road to 5G: KT, Qualcomm and Samsung Achieve Multi-vendor 5G NR Interoperability

Global mobile industry leaders KT Corporation, Qualcomm Technologies, a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated and Samsung Electronics have completed a multi-vendor 5G NR interoperable testing compliant with the recently completed 3GPP Release-15 Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G NR global standard.

Following the guidelines of KT Corporation, the live, over-the-air interoperable testing demonstrated data connections operating in 3.5 GHz and 28 GHz bands, utilizing pre-commercial 5G NR base stations from Samsung and 5G NR UE prototypes from Qualcomm Technologies.

The achievement is a significant milestone on the path to standard-compliant mobile 5G NR trials starting in 2018, leading to commercial 5G NR network deployments and multimode smartphone launches anticipated in 2019.

The live demonstration, which was held in Samsung’s lab in Suwon, South Korea, achieved multi-gigabits per second downlink speeds, as well as latencies as low as 1 millisecond. The fiber-like speeds and low latencies will be essential to meeting the increasing connectivity requirements of emerging mobile broadband experiences such as virtual/augmented reality, as well as enabling new high-reliability, low-latency services for industrial control, autonomous vehicles and drones, among other use cases.

“KT has worked closely with Samsung and Qualcomm Technologies on testing innovative mobile technologies,” said Seo, Chang-Seok, EVP and Head of Network Strategy Unit, KT. “KT believes that this 5G NR trial will pave the way to a successful launch of 5G NR networks and mobile devices, which will mark another technology breakthrough beyond the first broad-scale 5G trial services at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games.”

“As the industry works toward the goal of commercial launches of 5G NR products and networks in 2019, close collaboration among global mobile industry leaders on testing and successful trials are necessary to validate the technologies and continue to build and improve our capabilities,” said Cristiano Amon, president, Qualcomm Incorporated. “We are proud of our achievement with Samsung and KT and look forward to further collaboration on the path to making 5G a commercial reality.”

“The cooperation, led by the major game changers of the industry like KT and Qualcomm Technologies, is important to the progress of 5G and its implementation,” said Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, Executive Vice President and Head of the R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “As an active participant of 5G NR development, Samsung is extremely excited to see that our joint efforts have opened up the pathway for business models and use cases yet to be experienced.”

The end-to-end 5G NR interoperability testing demonstrated the essential components of the 5G NR air interface — fully compliant with 3GPP Release-15 5G NR specifications — including scalable 5G NR OFDM numerology, advanced 5G NR channel coding and modulation schemes, low-latency 5G NR slot structure and 5G NR control and data channel support for Massive MIMO and mobile mmWave.

The 5G NR interoperability demonstration will be on display at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from February 26 through March 2 at the Qualcomm Technologies booth in Hall 3 – Booth 3E10,  Samsung booth in Hall 2 – Stand 2M20, and KT booth in Hall 4 – Innovation city.