Facing 5G New Radio (NR) Test Challenges

It has been nearly five years since the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) released ITU-R M.2083-0, with a roadmap to release IMT-2020 to address the anticipated future of 5G performance that would greatly eclipse that of IMT-Advanced and then-planned 4G technology.

In 2017, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) rushed to release a preliminary version of their 5G standard (Release 15) so telecommunications companies would begin developing hardware and deploying 5G infrastructure according to their guidelines. The result was the new radio (NR) standard for 5G that includes a non-stand-alone (NSA) millimeter-wave spectrum capability and additional sub-6 GHz cellular bands. Release 15 has provided enhanced mobile broad-band (eMBB) specifications, with future updates to Release 16 and a Release 17 to provide more definition of massive machine-type communications (mMMC) and ultrareliable low-latency communications (URLLC).