The statement continues that the claims "have led to the abuse of our engineers and, in some cases, prevented essential network maintenance taking place." The statement concludes by reminding the public of the vital role of network connection and urges anyone who witnesses the abuse of telecom workers to report the incident to local authorities.

Having a better idea of what the standard will look like is a good first step to understanding the commercialization of 5G, but there are also a number of other challenges in both component and system design as well as device validation and test that may impact the speed of deployment of these new technologies. The addition of technologies like beamformng requires changes in the design of RFICs like power amplifiers and transceivers. To minimize system loss, antenna arrays are being increasingly integrated into the same chip or module as the PA’s and transceivers. As a result, engineers can no longer test these devices with traditional cabled test methodologies. Indtead, over-the-air testing, which was once taboo, is becoming mandatory.

The Challenges Ahead for Test and Measurement

New Radio, especially for mmWave, is significantly more complex than LTE. Much of the existing test equipment is not designed to handle the combination of higher carrier frequencies, wider bandwidths, and over-the-air measurements. In fact, even the simplest measurement tasks such as taking an RF power measurement must must be rethought for 5G because the definition of what it means to take calibrated over-the-air measurement is not clearly defined and agreed upon in industry.

While the standardization process of layer 1 and layer 2 is rapidly coming to a close, there are still numerous challenges that remain to be solved. Thusfar 5G has opened up a new era in wireless communications and it’s clear that this is just the beginning. Now it’s time for RFIC design and the test and measurement industry to take what we’ve learned from wireless researchers and similarily innovate in order for 5G to be deployed commercially.
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