French research institute Leti, part of the R&D organization CEA Tech, has been granted a six-month license to run a field trial using 3.5 GHz TDD spectrum, which has been earmarked by national regulator Arcep for future 5G services. As part of the trial, Leti will deploy a 5G framework on the Minatec campus in the city of Grenoble, aiming to test several new concepts through 5G experiments in a real-life situation. In particular, Leti plans to demonstrate a post-OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) multicarrier waveform which aims to overcome the shortcomings inherent in actual LTE waveforms (such as out-of-band emission). This new solution features backward compatibility with current LTE receiver architecture.
The trial will also investigate other techniques applicable to future 5G networks, including ways to reduce self-interference when deploying in-band full-duplex (IBFD), which consists in transmitting and receiving in the same frequency band at the same time to increase data rates.
