What to Expect With the 5G Shift in Private Networks

While enterprises have predominantly relied on public networks in the past, that situation has changed with the 5G shift in private networks.

Private networks, principally 4G/LTE, have become much more common, offering numerous advantages over public networks, including:

Enhanced cybersecurity

Greater control

More flexibility and customization

However, there is a shift happening in the market and more 5G deployments are taking place, driven by:

Increasing private network allocations in 5G

Greater availability of needed technology and expertise

The device ecosystem embracing 5G

More industry groups certifying 5G solutions

Network design considerations are very important for any enterprise interested in a private 5G network. Justifying the ROI on a private network deployment will depend on accurate network design to deliver that ROI.

Networks must be designed to take advantage of the full potential of 5G’s superior capabilities.

Present and Future Use Cases Should Drive Adoption

For the moment, 4G/LTE remains dominant for a few reasons:

Many deployments required 4G as an anchor

Few standalone 5G products on market

Fragmentation of 5G bands limited market viability

Many products and applications were only available in 4G/LTE

Perception of 5G as a moving target, immature market, has limited demand

Despite featuring in fewer deployments, private 5G networks offer substantial benefits over private 4G/LTE networks. 5G offers greater bandwidth and lower latency, allowing enterprises to introduce bandwidth-intensive and latency-sensitive technologies more easily. It also enables support for more users, devices, and access points simultaneously.

The use cases an enterprise needs to address should drive the potential adoption of a private 5G network. In general, use cases that need significant bandwidth or have extremely sensitive latency requirements will see benefits from 5G.

It’s important to note that enterprises should consider both present and future use cases in their planning.

Preparing in advance for future technologies and bandwidth that may need 5G capabilities can help enterprises avoid significant added costs down the road.

Ideal Use Cases that Take Advantage of the Benefits of 5G

What are the ideal use cases? While the number and variety of use cases will vary by industry sector, let’s look at three examples.

5G Shift in Private Networks: Enhancing Live Events

Inside of a football stadium, showing the 5G Shift in Private Networks: Enhancing Live EventsA stadium that hosts thousands of fans at a time wants to allow those fans to use their handheld devices to buy merchandise, livestream an event as it happens, or live-tweet or use social media during the event.

Enhancing the event with online services delivers direct value by allowing customers to purchase concessions and merchandise. And it can also generate free organic marketing via social media. But allowing thousands of devices to operate simultaneously requires enormous bandwidth capabilities that only private 5G networks can offer.

5G Shift in Private Networks: Delivering Location-Based Services

Similarly, a shopping mall may want to offer direct marketing to customers inside the mall by advertising stores and products available on premises. Many retail establishments also want to offer services to users, such as directions to shops or amenities like washrooms and parking lots.

These types of location-based services improve the user experience inside the mall and produce direct revenues for retailers. 5G’s substantial bandwidth allows them to support a large number of users at the same time. And its improved latency can be used to provide directions and product offerings in real time as users move through the mall.

5G Shift in Private Networks: Enabling AI and IoT

Factories are also ideal environments for private 5G deployments. With 5G, factory operations can be enhanced with autonomous, connected vehicles that leverage IoT and AI technologies. These vehicles can deliver substantial value by increasing operational efficiency and reducing personnel costs, among other benefits.

Private 5G networks provide the higher bandwidth and low latency needed to support the movement and delivery of the enormous quantities of data that is constantly generated by autonomous vehicles. High-latency networks reduce the value of having autonomous vehicles on the factory floor and can make those vehicles inefficient.

iBwave Delivers Needed Design Capabilities

None of these use cases will exist in sterile, fully controlled environments. Stadiums, malls, and factories are all highly dynamic environments with many ways for a signal to get lost, interrupted, or blocked. And 5G, like 4G/LTE, will have to co-exist with other technologies, such as Wi-Fi. So, integration and interaction with these technologies must be considered when enterprises are designing a 5G network.

5G networks are also more difficult to design than 4G/LTE networks, and more expensive. This means that mistakes are easier to make and more costly. Therefore, accurate network design and coverage prediction are crucial to ensuring that enterprises get the value they need from an investment in a 5G network.

iBwave Private Networks fully addresses all the design complexities and provides clear, easy-to-use software for survey and design. It enables network designers to easily and quickly design accurate networks, avoiding both under design and overdesign. Available as a 5G/LTE and Wi-Fi solution, iBwave Private Networks enables designers to easily:

Model venues in advanced 3D with AutoCAD import

Design from a database of vendor-modeled network components, including Small Cells, Aps, cables, controllers, routers, and more

Calibrate prediction with survey results

Run key project reports

iBwave Private Networks delivers the simplest and most reliable solution for planning, designing, and delivering high-performance private 5G networks. Advanced features such as the Fast Ray Tracing Prediction Engine, Prediction Calibration, Inclined Surface Modeling, and Attenuation by Frequency ensure the network you design and install functions exactly as intended. Plus, cloud connectivity and seamless integration with iBwave Mobile Survey ensures that iBwave can meet all your network needs, present and future.

For more information, take a look at the full product breakdown of iBwave Private Networks.

And for more insights into the growing demand for 5G networks, download our latest e-book: Top Trends in Private Networks for 2023.

5 Trends Driving Demand for Private 5G Networks

Private 5G networks and dedicated cellular networks are not new. But they hit a critical turning point in 2022, with 100s or perhaps even over 1,000 deployments for a variety of applications on in enterprise communications on enterprise campuses, industrial sites, as well as local fixed-wireless use.

All this activity shows that deployments are beginning to move beyond proof-of-concept and trials. They represent full-scale production usage in a range of verticals, from oil and gas to mining, and ports to defense.

The increase in deployments in 2022 was driven by five key underlying trends that will continue to create more demand for private 5G networks and wireless cellular networks in 2023. These trends are further explored in iBwave’s latest e-book, written by Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis: Top Trends in Private Networks for 2023.

With increasing demand, there will be a corresponding need for software tools that enable accurate and cost-effective design of the coverage needed to take advantage of all the benefits a private network offers.

Transition From 4G to 5G

The first underlying trend is an increasing shift by enterprises from 4G to 5G. Until recently, a variety of factors such as fragmentation of 5G bands and limited product and application availability have given 4G a competitive advantage over 5G.

But this is changing for a variety of reasons, including:

An increasing availability of 5G bands from regulatory authorities
Multiple vendors offering 5G SA cores
More offerings of 5G SA networks from MNOs

Switching Is Easier and More Enticing

There are also strategic shifts happening that are making it easier and more enticing for enterprises to make the switch to 5G:

Regulatory and spectrum-management teams in most MNOs are becoming more agile at handling localized allocations, which allows them to find unused frequencies that can be put to use in dedicated systems.
The device ecosystem is adopting 5G more broadly, increasing the range of offerings, while support is also increasing for 5G SA mode and a greater range of frequency options.
The emerging 5G Reduced Capability (RedCap) option, which optimizes 5G for lower cost IoT modules, is increasing the number of enterprises that can successfully adopt 5G.
Industry groups such as the CBRS Alliance are starting to certify 5G solutions, opening the market to a broader set of integrators.

Powerful mmWave Capability for Private 5G Networks

A second trend driving demand for private networks is that the potential uses of high-band or mmWave frequencies for private network applications is now being recognized.

There are numerous advantages to using mmWave and, as the private 5G market continues to mature, existing MNOs with mmWave allocations are beginning to look more closely at enterprise use cases. Some national regulators are also allowing direct access for businesses and system integrators.

Underused mmWave Spectrum Is Open for Allocation

The key advantages provided by mmWave for private network applications include:

More available spectrum than in mid-range bands, allowing for higher throughputs with peak speeds in the multi-Gbps range
Lower existing allocations in the mmWave range make allocations there less politically contentious, particularly for countries with several competing MNOs
True ultra-low latency deployments are easier, as there’s no need for the technical restrictions used in the mid-band to allow for more users
Frequencies can be allocated without impacting macro networks
Private network capabilities can easily be added to neutral-host indoor mmWave infrastructure, enabling one network of small cells to support multiple public networks
Increased interest from network and semiconductor vendors to find alternative markets given 5G’s short range
The maturing market is making it easier to engineer enhanced mmWave coverage

More Full-Scale Deployment

The third key trend driving demand for private networks is a transition from proof-of-concept deployments to large-scale deployments.

The move from small-scale, low-risk trials of a new and promising technology to commercial adoption has, historically, been a difficult hurdle for enterprises. Technology challenges tend to slow adoption rates. But, as those challenges are addressed, stakeholders and decision-makers tend to still be cautious about taking on potentially risky network deployments.

Maturing Ecosystem Increasing Confidence in Private 5G Networks for Enterprise Communications

However, decision-makers have more to work with today than they did before when considering full-scale deployments of private 5G networks:

Features are maturing, providing enterprises greater confidence in key network characteristics, such as quality, low-latency, and positioning accuracy.
More case studies, ROI models, and documentation have created greater confidence that the risks and value can be better known in advance.
A wider pool of talent is available to deploy and manage private 5G networks than ever before.
More deployment template models reduce the need for bespoke solutions, which can be comparatively complex and unpredictable.
New models for financing and commercialization like pay-as-you-grow cloud models reduce risk and enhance scalability.
A growing awareness and trust of private 4G and 5G is encouraging more enterprises to build on experimental deployments.

Growth of Private 5G Networks for Public Venues

There is mounting evidence that private wireless can add value in public venues. As a result, private cellular is beginning to gain more ground for these types of deployments.

This fourth trend is being driven by the:

Identification of specific niches and use cases where private networks can add value, such as in revenue-generating or safety-critical applications that need to be ring-fenced to avoid congestion from public Wi-Fi
Reduction of cost and complexity involved in deploying private cellular 4G and 5G networks
Growing awareness and trust of private 4G/5G among enterprise end users
Expansion of the ecosystem, which is enabling additional vertical applications, more support from service providers, and greater access to planning and design tools
Growing adoption of private cellular wireless by public venues in outdoor settings where Wi-Fi struggles
Increasing adoption of DAS-type systems that allow private networks to be deployed as secondary or add-ons to neutral-host platforms

Combining Wi-Fi and 5G in Private Networks

The final trend driving demand for private networks is related to the ongoing conversation about network convergence.

There is an increasing interest in integrating or converging private 4G/5G with Wi-Fi, given that many enterprise sites need both technologies. The greatest advantage of convergence appears to be partitioning, which allows for deployments that:

Isolate traffic and ring-fence domains, allowing each technology to handle the task it is most suited or most needed for
Backhaul from Wi-Fi to a private cellular wireless 4G/5G network, which can be a very useful asset, particularly where running fiber is unfeasible
Dedicate cellular networks for fixed-wireless access and use Wi-Fi for final device connectivity in education, healthcare, and for local government agencies
Enable connectivity handovers between networks using private 5G as a bridge for Wi-Fi-connected devices, creating seamless connectivity in campus-type settings

Additionally, the maturing ecosystem is making the integration of both networking technologies easier with:

More IoT devices capable of handling 4G, 5G, and/or Wi-Fi, and that can load-balance between multiple radios
The ability to offload public 5G onto private wireless cellular networks and Wi-Fi, particularly inside buildings, for devices from different MNOs or different classes of device
Tools that combine planning, design, operations, and security capabilities and cover multiple network types

Private 5G Networks Going From Cutting-Edge to Commonplace

When it comes to the realities of deploying a private 5G network, survey and design are critical considerations. Ensuring these networks deliver on their intended value ultimately comes down to the survey and design process. A seamless deployment of an inaccurate network is, in the end, an efficient way to implement an inefficient network.

iBwave offers a variety of flexible, modular tools for survey and design to ensure your enterprise has everything it needs to efficiently build accurate and effective private networks.

For more details on how changing trends and technology are driving the growth of private wireless worldwide, check out iBwave’s latest e-book, written by Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis: Top Trends in Private Networks for 2023.

Feature Spotlight: Beamforming in 5G Design

Have you downloaded the latest version of iBwave? In this article we’re going to put the spotlight on Beamforming in 5G design – one of the key new features in Release 13.

What is Beamforming?

In iBwave Release 13, users can configure multi-beam antennas to support beamforming for 5G NR. They can also add individual RF patterns to components, which can then be combined into a single pattern for prediction. Effectively, you’ll be able to trial and preview the effect of individual beam configurations while designing in-building 5G networks.

Beamforming will improve over time as OEMs add more components and beam configurations to the iBwave DB. Product managers are working closely with manufacturers to roll out new VEX files, and users can anticipate increased beamforming for 5G NR functionality in 2020 and beyond.

How does Beamforming work?

Engineers can now configure multi-beam antennas (including sub-panels) and multi-beam small cells in the database editor and apply them to design projects. The DB Editor now allows users to view and filter RF patterns for beamforming antennas and small cells by beam type and beam index.

Predictions are calculated according to the beam-type associated with the output map when including a beamforming component in a 5G NR design. For example, SSB beam types will use an SS-RSRP map.

When the user defines PDSCH beam types, iBwave uses these to calculate MADR values. Users should note that the composite power values listed on tooltips represent the maximum gain value of the combined beam pattern. In predictions, coverage maps create a combined beam pattern.

Enabling or disabling individual beams will automatically update the output map using Beamforming with 5G NR antennas.

Want to learn more about Beamforming and 5G design?

Download this 5G NR quick reference poster to easily see beam measurements and SSB patterns while designing 5G networks.

Go in-depth on Beamforming with 5G expert Ali Jemmali in our webinar all about the topic.

Find out how to future-proof 5G for in-building design and convergence in our recent blog post.