Qualcomm announces ‘5G modem’ with up to 5Gbit/s

Qualcomm announced its first 5g modem at the 4g/5g Summit in Hong Kong. The Snapdragon X50, as the modem is called, should be able to offer speeds of up to 5Gbit/s by supporting a bandwidth of 800MHz.

Qualcomm writes that the Snapdragon X50 is intended for manufacturers who can put the modem in their devices. According to the company, that should happen for the first time sometime in the first half of 2018. Initially, the modem should only support millimeter waves in the 28GHz radio spectrum. The high availability of frequencies in this spectrum allows Qualcomm to achieve high bandwidths, the company explains in a document.

The disadvantage of using millimeter waves is that they do not have a high penetration rate and penetrate walls and other obstacles poorly. Qualcomm wants to solve this problem by using a number of different antennas with 5G techniques such as adaptive beamforming and beam tracking to be able to offer a stable connection even in areas where obstacles can be found.

In addition, manufacturers must combine the X50 with a 4g modem to use both techniques. That comes in handy when the device moves outside the 5G coverage area, explains Qualcomm. The Snapdragon X50 modem comes in combination with the sdr051 millimeter wave transceiver and the pmx50 chip for power management.

The European Union has recently set a target to achieve full 5G coverage by 2025. The first 5G networks could start in 2018, but it will probably take until at least 2022 before providers start deploying 5G on a large scale in Europe.

Explanation of the applied techniques