Two Japanese companies, Sony and Mitsui, say they have achieved the successful operation of Sony's Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) technology in a standalone 5G environment. The parties used Airspan 5G standalone base stations, which coordinate with independent 5G core networks. Sony’s DSA technology assigns available frequency bands in real time while suppressing radio interference.
The two companies have also signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly study the commercial potential for DSA technology.
Sony is one of the spectrum access system (SAS) administrators authorized to work in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum in the United States. But the company doesn’t seem to be mentioned as often as other SAS administrators, which include Federated Wireless, Google, CommScope, Amdocs and Key Bridge Wireless.
The SAS administrators dynamically manage spectrum for the three tiers of the CBRS spectrum to make sure there’s no interference among users, with special attention paid to Defense Department (DoD) users.
For its part, Mitsui is a huge conglomerate that has businesses in banking, shipping, steel, chemicals and technology, among other verticals. Through its subsidiary, Mitsui Knowledge Industry, the company is driving the use of "Local 5G" networks in Japan, to serve the wireless needs of industries.
Sony and Mitsui aim to build a spectrum sharing model for specific business use cases across a broad geographic area, including Japan, other regions of Asia, the U.S. and Europe.
The two companies predict that spectrum sharing technology will be used widely to optimize the use of finite radio frequency resources, replacing the traditional method of managing each frequency band separately.
RELATED: With 100,000 CBRS access points already, spectrum sharing is eyed for other bands
Recently, Federated Wireless led a demonstration for the U.S. DoD using CBRS and millimeter wave spectrum, underscoring the importance of spectrum sharing between government and non-government entities. What made the event especially significant was that spectrum normally wouldn’t have been used by the U.S. Marine Corps if it weren’t for the unique sharing paradigm implemented in the CBRS band, according to Federated Wireless.
The FCC is in the process of reviewing spectrum sharing in other bands. And the topic has garnered attention not just in the U.S., but globally, as stakeholders start planning for 6G.