The 3GPP Release 17 specification for 5G introduced some major upgrades – among them support for 1024 QAM, which enables higher data transfer speeds as Samsung and Qualcomm just demonstrated.
Using Samsung 5G vRAN tech running on 2.1GHz (FDD) and 3.5GHz (TDD) and a test unit with a Snapdragon X75 modem, the two companies achieved speeds of 485Mbps with 20MHz bandwidth. This is 20% higher than what’s possible with the 256 QAM that is common on 5G networks today. The X75 modem is featured in the Snapdragon 8/8s Gen 3, by the way.
This is a first time in the industry this was pulled…
