Mobile World Congress 2017

Another Mobile World Congress (MWC) has wrapped up in the beautiful city of Barcelona and with more than 100,000 attendees, it’s safe to say that MWC has evolved into a show that encompasses the entire wireless ecosystem – not just the traditional cellular industry.

Major Themes:

- 5G – Everyone was talking about 5G; in fact, several vendors and operators demonstrated lab implementations of the 3GPP NR (New Radio) air interface. For example, China Mobile showcased a 5G NR link in the 3.5 GHz band delivering an overall throughput of 10 Gbps. The prototype mobile client (UE) for this demo was about 3.5 feet and from Qualcomm. Fortunately, it will be 3 years or so before NR is available, so the folks in San Diego have some time to figure out how to squeeze all of that into a smartphone form factor. - AR/VR – It’s not clear if the large number of virtual reality demonstrations, including roller coasters, flight simulators, and immersive first person shooters, was meant to highlight the capabilities of the next generation mobile devices and faster network connections, or was simply an effective way to get people into your booth. Whatever the case, these demonstrations were very popular. - Gigabit LTE – While the mobile industry’s attention is largely shifting to 5G, we will be relying on LTE technology for the next few years. A number of LTE infrastructure and smartphone vendors demonstrated their ability to push LTE past 1 Gbps with Carrier Aggregation (CA). In some cases, demonstrations were showing the aggregation of licensed primary cells with unlicensed secondary cells, aka LTE-LAA.

Ruckus Activities at MWC:

Ruckus announced a number of new products and solutions at MWC, including: - Ruckus SP Cloud – A fully customizable cloud management platform that allows Service Providers to easily deploy, configure, and manage Ruckus Wi-Fi Access Points, OpenG LTE Small Cells, and the ICX line of wired switches. -OpenG CBRS Small Cells – Following up on the debut of OpenG at last year’s MWC, Ruckus announced the following new LTE Small Cells for the 3.5 GHz CBRS band:

• Q710 – an indoor TD-LTE small cell covering approximately 10,000 square feet of indoor space.
• Q910 – an outdoor TD-LTE small cell with a coverage area of approximately 300 feet.

These announcements contributed to the heavy volume of traffic at the Ruckus exhibit, as many attendees came by to see the OpenG and SP Cloud demos, as well as to take a look at the Wi-Fi Access Points and LTE Small Cells that were on display. A number of other member companies of the CBRS Alliance were also demonstrating 3.5 GHz CBRS solutions. For some additional perspective on the show, please see our video:  [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-8nrbnUynM&t=69s [/embed]