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Samsung is building toward 6G
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Fierce wasn't allowed to take pics of the proto-6G kit at MWC but we got the low-down
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The vendor already has spectrum in mind for 6G
Samsung has lots of 6G radio elements to tell you about!
Talking to Fierce at Mobile World Congress (MWC), Kali Pickens, director of marketing at the networks business for Samsung Electronics America, introduced a couple of massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) arrays that the firm said will be ready for 6G radio.
We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the proto-6G kit, but they looked broadly similar to modern 5G massive MIMO arrays. (See image.)
"We haven’t set an exact time line yet,” Pickens said of any launch date for the next-generation arrays.
Typically, Fierce expects commercial 6G to start to arrive on 2030, but we could see some pre-commercial test deployments in 2029 or perhaps even earlier.
In fact, we surely can’t wait until some unscrupulous mobile network operators (MNOs) start proclaiming their re-branded 5G-Advanced networks as 6G sometime in 2027, because that’s bound to happen!
Nonetheless, extremely large massive MIMO arrays are what Samsung initially expect to power 6G on the radio access side. The spectrum Samsung plans to support for 6G “is 6 GHz for Europe and 13 GHz for the U.S,” Pickens stated.
“The antenna elements got increasingly larger and we’re still doing it in a small form factor,” Pickens commented. She noted that one of the proto-6G MIMO arrays had “over 3000 antenna elements” in there. It’s long way from the eight element 5G arrays of yore.
She noted that Samsung has already made a mark with its virtualized RAN (vRAN) for Verizon and other operators.
“vRAN and open RAN are our big claim to fame” Pickens said.
Now, however, Samsung is starting to build its radio pathway to 6G.