Smart Antennas Could Open Up New Spectrum For 5G
- Theodore S. Rappaport, Wonil Roh, Kyungwhoon Cheun for spectrum.ieee.org/ August 28th, 2014
- Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/smart-antennas-could-open-up-new-spectrum-for-5g
People in real estate joke that there are only three things that matter in the business of buying and selling property: location, location, location. The same could be said for radio spectrum. The frequencies used for cellular communications have acquired the status of waterfront lots—highly coveted and woefully scarce. And like beach-home buyers in a bidding war, mobile operators must constantly jockey for these prime parcels, sometimes shelling out as much as tens of billions of dollars for just a small sliver of the electromagnetic pie.
That’s because the cellular industry, throughout its four-decade existence, has relied exclusively on a strip of spectrum known as the ultrahigh frequency band, which comprises only about 1 percent of all regulated spectrum.
