The 5G and Wi-Fi symbiosis

Wireless communications have transformed nearly every application space, from smart home security and personal computing to mobile phones, audio, and video streaming, and factory-floor automation. Benefiting from decades of rapid innovation, almost every electronic product on the market today is a connected device.

The technologies at the forefront of the field are 5G and emerging Wi-Fi networks such as Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7. Since cellular and Wi-Fi historically serve different use cases—many industry watchers view these technologies as competitors. 

While users preferred cellular for on-the-go, long-range communications with guaranteed latency and quality requirements, they saw Wi-Fi as a short-range LAN technology offering better data rates, suitable for households or sizeable premises with an option to tailor the network for a certain user density and application. These roles have typically made sense, but now, as 5G and Wi-Fi 6E/7 have both emerged as feature-rich technologies that promise to deliver a seamless user experience, this narrative is changing. As a matter of fact, 5G and Wi-Fi 6E/7 have developed a healthy interdependency. 

One particularly exciting use case is 5G-enabled customer premise equipment (CPE), which will make fixed wireless access (FWA) for private networks and enterprises a reality. With the rising popularity in the residential broadband market, let’s understand how 5G and Wi-Fi 6E/7 are coming together to benefit private networks, and what some of the pre-requisites for its success and adoption are.

The Rise of Fixed Wireless Access Through 5G and Wi-Fi 6E/7

One of the most prominent use cases to come from the 5G/Wi-Fi shared environment is the growth of FWA, with a strong potential to benefit private and enterprise networks.

Historically, private networks have relied on fixed broadband for internet connectivity, which requires permits for drilling holes, civil work for fiber installation and more, thus necessitating heavy capital investment, effort, and time. Conversely, FWA addresses these challenges by replacing traditional broadband with wireless connectivity far more efficiently and affordably using CPEs.

With FWA, the CPE device acts as the router, but instead of connecting to the internet via wired broadband, it uses 5G to connect wirelessly to the internet. Then, the devices within the private network connect to the CPE via standard Wi-Fi. In this capacity, the concept of FWA is only made possible through the newfound symbiosis between 5G and Wi-Fi.

Benefits of FWA

From an operator’s perspective, there are a few pivotal advantages,

1. Reusability of 5G spectrum and infrastructure: The biggest benefit to operators comes from the ability to fully utilize the existing 5G spectrum and mobile broadband (MBB) assets to deploy FWA services. This allows operators to bring down the cost per bit delivered to the customers and attain higher returns on 5G infrastructure investment.

2. Scalability: From the carrier’s perspective, the infrastructure needs no modification to offer higher data rates and extend connectivity from single to multiple users. It’s only at the consumers side that a comprehensive, function-packed CPE equipment will be required. Support for higher order MIMO, higher-gain antennas, 5G carrier aggregation, Wi-Fi multi-link operation (MLO), are a few of the critical features needed to adapt to enterprise traffic demands.

Although all these advantages sum up as new revenue opportunities for the operators, they are contingent upon the consumer’s adoption of the service, the cost of CPE devices, and overall time-to-market (TTM).

From a consumer’s point of view, the two biggest factors driving FWA adoption are,

1. Performance: In the case of private and enterprise networks, Quality of Service (QOS) plays a crucial role in driving the transition from fixed broadband to fixed wireless. In fact, many operators are now offering “speed tiers” in addition to the best-effort volume tariff plans to enable higher monetization and extend services to small-medium enterprises. 

Circling back to the main idea, even if the latest generation of Wi-Fi standard Wi-Fi 6/6E/7 is deployed in the 5G CPE, both technologies must function synchronously to prioritize, reserve bandwidth, and allocate resources for applications that are data intensive or latency sensitive. Comprehensive testing is required to verify antenna performance, ensure power calibration, and perform coexistence test as it has a direct impact on the end-to-end throughput and end-user service quality.

2. Cost: Affordability can act as a major catalyst in penetrating small/medium enterprises. The lower upfront cost of CPE installation and monthly service cost will assist in the widespread adoption of FWA; however, it largely rests in the hands of the operators and OEMs as the cost of development and manufacturing eventually gets passed down to the end-consumer.

Drawing from the points above, it is evident that 1. performance, 2. cost and 3. scalability are critical in driving the adoption of FWA for enterprises.

Bringing Down Cost, But Not at The Expense of Performance

In the case of FWA, operators are typically selling white label CPE products, which are designed and manufactured by a third party. From the performance viewpoint, often there are constraints over reducing the costs associated with hardware design and development. 

Yet, one aspect that can help keep both the economics & and product quality in check is test and measurement. Investing in a high-performance RF test solution not only safeguards device quality and brand reputation, but also brings down after-sales expenses, including returns, replacements, and service center costs that result from shipping poor quality products.

Let’s explore a few crucial aspects of an RF test solution that can help minimize the cost of test.

1. Multi-device testing: Parallel test capability in manufacturing is a multi-pronged approach that can improve overall throughput (units per hour – UPH), thus minimizing cost of test (COT) and increasing the overall production test efficiency. 

Unlike smartphones and IoT devices, CPEs have a longer bootup time, representing ~60-80% of the overall device test time. In such scenarios, deploying a test solution that utilizes this idle time to maximize the parallel test efficiencies can improve the overall test throughput and reduce test time.

2. Turnkey Automation Test Tool: Often, chipset-specific test tools come with the added expense of paying for the license and involve closely working on correlation and debugging. In contrast, an automation test tool pre-validated on chipset-specific libraries can significantly cut down on time and effort of in-house test tool development.

Moreover, the automation test tool can homogenize the result correlation and debug process from development to manufacturing.

For better economics and cost structure, the barrier to market entry must be minimized. To achieve this goal, its paramount to invest in a test instrument that offers superior performance and capability to test both 5G and Wi-Fi technologies. LitePoint is the industry leader in wireless testing, offering the best-in-class test capability for both 5G and Wi-Fi technologies from design verification all the way up to mass manufacturing. We help to ensure that 5G / Wi-Fi enabled devices work seamlessly and collaboratively in the real world.

Conclusion

As 5G and Wi-Fi 6E/7 continue to form a complementary relationship, new technologies like FWA for private networks are now commercially viable. 

Ultimately, 5G FWA is only as good as the performance of the underlying CPE. It is critical to thoroughly test the CPE for considerations such as antenna performance, power calibration, coexistence testing, and end-to-end throughput before deployment. 

LitePoint is accelerating the future of 5G FWA for enterprises by addressing these needs head-on through our advanced testing equipment for modern CPEs.

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