4.2 Flexible duplex

Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) has been the dominating duplex arrangement since the beginning of the mobile communication era. In the 5G era, FDD will remain the main duplex scheme for lower frequency bands. However, for higher frequency bands – especially above 10GHz – targeting very dense deployments, Time Division Duplex (TDD) will play a more important role. In very dense deployments with low-power nodes, the TDD-specific interference scenarios (direct base- station-to-base-station and device-to-device interference) will be similar to the ‘normal’ base-station-to-device and device-to-base-station interference that also occurs for FDD. Furthermore, for the dynamic traffic variations expected in very dense deployments, the ability to dynamically assign transmission resources (time slots) to different transmission directions may allow more efficient utilization of the available spectrum.

5G_GaN2 will address exactly this technology feature by evaluating GaN technologies with reduced memory effect.