Research
SK Telecom and Samsung Electronics have completed a 5G call using 3GPP non-standalone new radio standards and commercial 5G new radio equipment. The trial at SK Telecom’s 5G testbed at its Bundang office building used end-to-end solutions jointly developed by the two South Korean companies. It utilized 100MHz of 3.5-GHz 5G spectrum and 5G NR, LTE radio and 5G non-standalone core infrastructure.
The 5G non-standalone new radio architecture has been designed to allow 5G to be supported by legacy LTE infrastructure, allowing mobile devices to be connected to both 4G and 5G for data traffic, and to use the 4G network for non-data traffic such as exchanging signals for mobility controls.
This configuration is expected to be one of the promising 5G architectures for initial deployments.
Sasmsung announced last month that it has secured a contract to deliver 5G equipment including core and RAN technologies for SK Telecom’s 5G deployments, which will commence later this year.
The companies have been collaborating on 5G development since 2014, and jointly completed the first successful interworking of LTE and 5G new radio utilizing both 3.5-GHz and 28-GHz spectrum during a trial last year.
