Samsung is calling for massive expansion of the millimeter wave band to support the huge data demands of 6G.
Samsung said the current spectrum is not enough to meet all 6G capacity requirements, which means that new spectrum ranges need to be opened up in the so-called Asia-Pacific hertz (sub-THz) range of 24-300GHz.
The South Korean tech giant said it would require hundreds of MHz or tens of GHz of additional spectrum if 6G were to offer new terahbit services, such as immersive XR and high-fidelity mobile holograms.
In a white paper released last Sunday, Samsung said: "It is becoming increasingly difficult to dedicate limited spectrum resources to mobile communications. This led us to explore the Asia Pacific Hertz band to find large amounts of unused continuous spectrum. ”
Samsung said that the existing mobile spectrum can be used for 6G, and the sub-1GHz band can provide wide-area coverage and indoor signal penetration. The mid-band (1-24GHz) can ensure a considerable continuous bandwidth, but even then it is not enough.
The millimeter wave band (in the 24-92GHz range for 5G) has already been rolled out in six countries, including the United States, Japan and Australia, and will play a very important role in 6G, the white paper said.
But the upper limit needs to be raised to 300GHz to serve ultra-high capacity and ultra-low latency applications.
Start preparing for 6G now
Samsung said it was important to start offering 6G spectrum now because of the "fundamental and technical challenges" of deploying commercial wireless services on Hertz Asia Pacific.
While Samsung didn't explicitly say so, now is a good time to start looking into the 92-300GHz band range, as many of these bands have already been designated for applications such as astronomy, space exploration, and radio positioning services.
Source: Samsung.
Since the mobile industry's conflict with satellite services on the 3.5GHz band remains unfulfilled, it makes sense to try to prepare in advance.
The two Asia-Pacific Hertz bands identified by Samsung — the W band (92-114.25GHz) and the D band (92-114.25 GHz) — are heavily occupied by radio astronomy and space research.
Samsung noted that the W band has stronger signal propagation characteristics, although it also includes some small bands that completely ban radio transmissions.
However, the wireless industry's interest in the W band is nothing new. Samsung said that the 3GPP has made a preliminary exploration of the band when looking for 5G NR spectrum resources, and is currently studying the W and D bands around the world.
While 6G still seems to be a long way off, it will be many years before it completes a spectrum plan that will support the services we begin to provide in 2030.
Samsung added that it is important to consider "at an early stage the issuance of new spectrum licenses and possible ways to share spectrum with other existing services such as satellites, public, fixed links, broadcast networks, etc.". (C114 Ace)