The reason latency is becoming more important in digital applications is because there are a number of technologies in the pipeline that will rely on very low latency. This includes Industry 4.0 automation, real-time services, robotics, remote healthcare, immersive virtual reality entertainment and autonomous cars. While all of these segments will depend on low latency, autonomous or self-driving cars will need the lowest latency possible. Nokia (News - Alert) has demonstrated the ability to lower network latency to less than 2ms using its AirScale base station with 4.9 G technology at the 2017 Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) in Shanghai, with the eventual goal of applying it to 5G, which is expected to have even lower latency rates.
Having latency of less than 2ms in LTE (News - Alert) network is a new benchmark, which is bordering on the capabilities of 5G. Industry and enterprise applications can now be deployed using this technology, and when 5G networks start rolling out in 2019/2020, organizations can continue to deliver their next generations communications services without disruption.
“We are committed to helping operators evolve their networks in the most effective way, allowing them to anticipate and meet demands with higher performance where and when it is needed. We continue to evolve our 4G offering with 4.5G Pro and 4.9G technologies, and with this network latency demonstration we can show operators how they could use LTE to deliver higher-bandwidth industry and enterprise applications to more customers on their path to 5G,” said Tero Peltola, head of the LTE business line at Nokia.
Nokia is leveraging its AirScale base station platform to maximize speed and capacity in order to reduce network latency to less than two milliseconds on 4.9G. The company says it will allow transmission time intervals to be shortened by 86 percent.
The Nokia AirScale Base Station supports all technologies from 2G, 3G, LTE, TD-LTE to 5G. It has AirScale Single Band and Multiband radios and AirScale system modules with 28 Gbps capacity, which can be extended by chaining more system module units. For deployments with unlimited scalability, AirScale Base Station can take advantage of additional baseband capacity available via Cloud RAN. This future proof capacity will allow operators to continue using the platform as they evolve to 4.5G Pro, 4.9G and 5G.
For Nokia, the path to 5G has been built on incremental improvement in 4G technology. Operators can deploy these improvements, which are available in 4.5G, 4.5G Pro and 4.9G, to better understand the progression of the technology and be ready for 5G when it comes along.