Blog

[Photo Essay] Samsung 5G Interview with R&D Team: 4G-5G Network Dual Connectivity (EN-DC)

Jul 17. 2019

In March 2019, Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom announced that they had successfully completed the network device interoperability test applying Dual Connectivity technology using both 4G and 5G networks provided by Samsung's Networks Business. It is also known as 'E-UTRAN New Radio Dual Connectivity (EN-DC)' based on the 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR) standard.

 

During the test, Samsung had successfully achieved 2.65Gbps in data speeds on the 5G smartphone, combining both 1.5Gbps in 5G using 3.5GHz frequency (100MHz bandwidth) with 1.15Gbps in LTE using 1.8GHz, 2.1GHz, and 2.6GHz frequencies (65MHz bandwidth) all of which are for commercial use by SK Telecom.

 

We have interviewed some of our key engineers of Samsung Networks who were on the frontline of leading the EN-DC development to a success to hear their stories.

 

Please click here to watch the interview. 

Dojun Byun - Samsung Electronics, Network R&D Team SW Lab Dojun Byun - Samsung Electronics, Network R&D Team SW Lab

"EN-DC is a technology that combines the 4G and 5G connections to provide faster download speed for your phone," said Dojun Byun, a Principal Engineer at R&D Software Lab, Networks Business of Samsung Electronics. "By doing so, we've provided a breakthrough in mobile networks by expanding the existing bandwidth limitation with the next generation radio technology called 5G.” 

"A Technology that Combines the 4G and 5G Connections to Provide Faster Download Speed for Your Phone."

According to his statement, the technology offers the following benefits for mobile operators and general smartphone users - Bigger and faster downloads for smartphone users as well as offloading of 4G traffic to faster and wider carriers, 5G, for mobile operators.

We have asked one of our engineers from R&D System Integration Lab, Eunbee Jo, some challenges and lessons learned from applying EN-DC technology into the 5G commercial networks.

 

Mentioning that there were a number of hurdles she had to overcome, she described some of the technical challenges that she had encountered during the process of EN-DC development. The biggest hurdle out of the ones Eunbee described was combining two totally different physical links into one virtual link so that TCP based applications can flow naturally as if they were on a homogeneous network.

 

Eunbee elaborated further by adding that being able to dynamically adapt to different network characteristics was key to finding solutions. For example, depending on the situation of 4G and 5G networks, the data rate that can be provided at that time will be varied. Thus, it is necessary to distribute the user data to 4G and 5G networks according to each algorithm. 

 

"By Owning Both Base Station and UE Product Lines, Samsung was Able to Early-Start on Real End-to-End Integration"

Stating the key strengths of Samsung that led to achieving the successful test results, Dojun explained that "By owning both base station and user equipment (UE) product lines, we were able to early-start on real end-to-end integration giving us early chances to verify and fine-tune the algorithm in real networks.”

 

For further information on Samsung’s 4G-5G Network Dual Connectivity, please click here. 

List