Qualcomm unveiled the new Snapdragon X50 5G modem. The company says that it’s the first to unveil a commercial modem designed for next-gen phone manufacturers, and help network operators with their 5G testing. This Snapdragon X50 supports 5G operations in the 28GHz band.
Qualcomm said that the Snapdragon X50 can achieve speeds almost 400 times faster than the current average 4G download speed of the 13.5Mbps as it uses very wide bandwidths available in the next-generation 28GHz millimetre wave band combined with advanced signal processing technologies.
The downside to using higher frequencies, however, is that their limited penetration and range. Qualcomm looks to mitigate these issues by using an array of many small antennas and also employing adaptive beamforming and beam tracking to enable non-line-of-sight operation, it essentially using surface reflections to see around corners and objects.
Snapdragon X50
The Snapdragon X50 5G modem will be paired with two of new SDR051 millimeter-wave transceivers and the PMX50 power management IC to support fixed wireless applications and future mobile devices. Because it only supports millimeter-wave frequencies, it needs to be paired along with an additional 4G LTE modem to provide data uplink and voice capabilities and to allow seamless handoff between 4G and 5G networks depending on the availability. Qualcomm says the 5G antennas are much smaller than current 4G ones, and it can use an array of the 16, 24, or 32 in the place of one 4G antenna.
Qualcomm expects this Snapdragon X50 to begin sampling in the second half of 2017, with first commercial products incorporating the new components showing up in the first half of 2018.