Qualcomm Leads The Race To 5G Advanced

The launch of 5G was so recent that it almost seems absurd to be talking about 5G Advanced, the next major step in cellular technology, but the global push for cellular innovation led by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) international standards organization never stops. Release 17 of the 5G standard was frozen on March 22, 2022, followed by the coding protocols in June, and Release 18, which marks the beginning of 5G Advanced, will not be frozen until 2024. However, work on the features and specifications for Release 18 have been under way for several years both by individual companies and collectively as part of the 3GPP standards organization.

Qualcomm has been a leading contributor to cellular standards since 2G, and the company continues to push the boundaries of cellular innovation with each 3GPP release. Qualcomm is often one to two generations ahead of its competitors in modem technology and this is more evident than ever with the announcement of the new Snapdragon X75 5G modem, which will support Release 17 and will be “5G Advanced Ready” for Release 18, according to the company.

Each 3GPP Release builds upon previous releases with a combination of both new and enhanced technology. Among the improvements and additions in Release 17 are support for new frequency bands, improved reliability for low-latency applications, integrated access and backhaul (IAB), radio access network (RAN) slicing for New Radio (NR), MIMO antenna improvements for NR, NR sidelink enhancements, power saving enhancements, and support for non-terrestrial networks (NTN), more commonly referred to as satellite communications, for both IoT and NR. Release 18 (5G Advanced) will add additional coverage enhancements, network energy savings, further MIMO evolution, improved positioning, AI/ML for improved performance, and NTN enhancements.

The new Snapdragon X75 modem is available as a discrete solution that supports a wide range of applications ranging from smartphones and PCs to vehicles and industrial applications like robotics. The X75 is really a complete modem and RF subsystem that includes the modem, the transceiver, and the RF front end.

One key enhancement to the X75 over the previous X70 modem is a single integrated transceiver for both the sub-6GHz and the 5G mmWave frequencies. According to Qualcomm, the move to an integrated transceiver will simplify the interface and design resulting in an area reduction on the PCB (printed circuit board) by as much as 25%, a 40% reduction in the engineering bill of materials (eBOM) cost, and a 20% reduction in power consumption even if the platform is used just for the sub-6 GHz frequencies.

Another key enhancement is the addition of tensor processing cores for enhanced AI processing. Qualcomm first added AI processing to its previous generation Snapdragon X70 modem to increase the modem subsystem performance and to reduce latency by improving various functions, including frequency/link selection and beam forming. According to Qualcomm, adding tensor processing cores increases AI performance by as much as 2.5 times over the X70. The AI capabilities also allow for improved location tracking by combining the enhanced sub-6Gz and 5G mmWave beam forming along with GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals, Wi-Fi signals, and information gathered from sensors. All of these capabilities fit within the proposed Release 18 standards.

Most of the other Snapdragon X75 enhancements are tied to improved connectivity and performance. The X75 will include sub-6GHz carrier aggregation for five separate frequency blocks, FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) uplink carrier aggregation, uplink MIMO antenna support, Qualcomm RF Downlink Boost technology, and switched uplink (the ability to use TDD (Time Division Duplex) timeslots for FDD transmission to achieve higher transmission rates). The X75 also adds ten-frequency block carrier aggregation for 5G mmWave signals, 1024 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) for sub-6GHz frequencies, and 256 QAM for 5G mmWave frequencies. In addition to the hardware enhancements, the Snapdragon X75 is paired with Qualcomm’s Advanced Modem-RF Software Suite that provides smart network selection, advanced interference cancelation, and dual SIM support.

The best way to summarize all of this is that Qualcomm is enabling more ways to maximize the efficient use of limited spectrum and achieve Gigabit speeds on the uplink and downlink with the lowest possible latency and highest reliability.

Finally, the Snapdragon X75 supports both Release 17 and Release 18 specifications, which sounds like a repetition of the above specs, but without a frozen specification for Release 18, full Release 18 support seems a bit out of reach at this early in the specification’s development. However, Qualcomm is once again a leading contributor to the 3GPP specifications and is confident that the X75 can support the new and enhanced technologies, such as AI, included in Release 18. In many cases, supporting any final changes to the standards may just require software modifications assuming the X75 modem hardware can support the functions.

The Snapdragon X75 will also be a key component in Qualcomm’s 3^rd-generation 5G fixed wireless access platform that will also include Wi-Fi 7 support. While the company did not mention when the Snapdragon X75 modem would be integrated into the Snapdragon smartphone processors, Tirias Research believes it will be integrated in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which should be announced in the fall as a follow-on to the Gen 2, which has an integrated X70 modem.

With Mobile World Congress in Barcelona just a few weeks away, this is just the first time we are likely to see and hear of new chips and products supporting the 3GPP Release 17 standards and about planned support for Release 18 with 5G Advanced.