Arctic chipsets provide unique benefits for building 5G private networks, offering tailored solutions for secure, high-speed, and customizable connections. Enterprises are looking to take advantage of 5G advancements such as increased throughput and reduced latency while also ensuring security and control over their own dedicated network. These networks can be tailored to the specific needs of the organization and help drive digital transformation. The radio access equipment (such as small cells or private network access points) can operate on leased licensed bands or unlicensed bands like CBRS. Users must have access to the allocated band through a subscription or provided SIM card, and the equipment must be cost-effective and have low power consumption while providing excellent performance.
best-in-class RF chipsets
With the advantages of cellular technology over legacy wireless LAN (Wi-Fi), private entities, enterprises, and organizations can deploy private cellular networks and leverage the benefits in their controlled and secure set up. These benefits include better range and coverage, lower latency, better reliability, as well as accelerated and customized services to more users. Data management and edge processing are also additional benefits when it comes to industrial applications and Internet of Things.
Private cellular network utilizes special radio equipment to connect to user devices. It also needs data servers running the core software or “Evolved Packet Core” to control network traffic and manage data services. The radio access equipment (small cells or private network access points or Radio Units) operates over leased licensed bands or unlicensed bands. This means that a private cellular network requires all the technology and the equipment necessary to deploy a functional wireless network.
Arctic Semiconductor offers best-in-class RF chipsets in the market and enables device makers and manufacturers to develop cost effective fully integrated radio solutions for private network infrastructure applications. The multi-band features and excellent signal quality benefits of Arctic products enable solution providers to deploy radios equipment at scale in private entities and attain desired performance for such use cases.
What is a Private Network?
Private networks are dedicated infrastructures that deliver high quality connections within a specific location such as private businesses, factories, ports, mines, hotels, etc. For 5G private network, the infrastructure can be based on a distributed cellular antenna system or centralized small cells. The dedicated networks are operated by the enterprises, or even a public agency on one or multiple locations. The components necessary to build a cellular private network include:
- Radio Access Network (RAN)
- Core network (on-site or hyperscale cloud services)
- Backhaul network (cable, fiber or other types of connections used to access the World Wide Web)
- Licensed, shared, or unlicensed radio spectrum.
Building 5G private networks is becoming easier and less costly as hardware and software technologies mature.
The Radio Access Network (RAN) hardware and software are located on-site. However, the core network can run on local data centers or a hyperscale cloud service provider. The important point is that the enterprises have control over data management, quality of service, dedicated resource allocations, edge compute, and security.
Soon, most organizations and enterprises including universities, companies, airports, manufacturing plants with IoT applications and even residential buildings can deploy private LTE or 5G networks and not only expand the coverage area and improve throughput and latency of the connections, but also utilize AI technologies, data analysis services and other cutting-edge solutions in a larger scale setting.
How is Arctic changing the game?
Wireless spectrum for private applications is now available in many countries. In Europe and Japan, specific bands are dedicated for 5G private utilization, while in the US, the CBRS initiative by the FCC is based on a unique sharing scheme for private enterprises. In the past, private enterprises could not build their own network due to the high cost of equipment as well as licensing or purchasing a band. For equipment manufacturers who want to build cost effective solutions for such a market, it’s extremely critical to be able to design and develop flexible and programmable solutions that operate in different regions and across various bands that are operable within the private spectrum with minor updates.
Arctic Semiconductor offers the most integrated and cost-effective RF chipset in the market. The support for a wide range of frequencies enables equipment manufacturers to design and develop flexible solutions for different regions globally. This includes any RF band within 600MHz to 7.2GHz (FR1) as well as support for mmWave (FR2) antennas’ IF to baseband conversion. In the meantime, the highly advanced CMOS design and the patented technology has led to an unprecedented level of energy efficiency. This means that utilizing Arctic chipsets lowers the RF transceiver power consumption by 70%, while system power consumption will be reduced by 30%. Arctic chipsets combine multiple functionalities in a compact chipset reducing PCB footprint by a factor of 10 and reducing cost of development as well as increasing reliability of the system.
Why 5G private network wins against WiFi?
In a modern industrial space, various types of connectivity requirements exist. This includes the typical office applications and connectivity needs of mobile users as well as critical applications related to the operation of the business. The latter use cases need the same level of performance and reliability as wired networks but in a wireless setting and in a highly dense environment. This means both a stable connection and, in some cases, ultra-low latency communication. WiFi technology can support the typical office communication needs, however for operational applications, WiFi has fundamental shortcomings that 5G is addressing. Some of these issues are the following:
- Performance in terms of reliability, throughput, and latency: Even though WiFi has focused on improving bit rate, the fundamental channel access methodology limits the technology in terms of important performance metrics of communication.
- Ability to support a highly dense network: The number of active connections that can be supported by 5G is many times higher than WiFi in the same space. This is due to the way cellular technology handles user connection vs simpler WiFi random access method even within a wider available spectrum.
- QoS support: 5G offers network slicing and enables higher throughput and better performance as required per application.
- Security: 5G has raised the security standard to another level and supports an extremely robust network compared to WiFi.
- Mobility hand off: 5G supports a soft handoff mechanism when roaming between access points. This is crucial in critical applications such as ports or mines when WiFi breaks one connection before trying to connect to another access point.
There are some added initial investment costs associated with a 5G private network, but these costs will be offset as the site increases in size. Moreover, with the advancements in hardware and software technology, the deployment cost of private networks is decreasing, making the case for the private network to be the superior solution for industrial sites and large enterprises.