Analog Devices CEO Forecasts 'Evolutionary' Transition to ‘Revolutionary’ 5G

Analog Devices is participating in “virtually all” the 5G “field trials" that are taking place "across the globe,” said CEO Vincent Roche on a Wednesday earnings call. Roche's "sense" is that the U.S. and China will take the lead in “trialing” some 5G “particular applications” in the 2019-2020 “time frame,” he said. “China will get faster to mass market, I think, with what they call 5G, which is really to me 4-and-a-half-G with massive MIMO.” Roche sees “pure 5G” taking shape commercially in the 2024-2025 time frame, he said. That’s when “the core network gets changed,” he said. With 5G, “an entirely new wireless and wireline network architecture will ultimately be needed to meet the demands for orders-of-magnitude increases in bandwidth-hungry areas,” such as HD video streaming, said Roche. Though 5G will provide “revolutionary capabilities,” the transition “will be evolutionary,” he said. Adding massive MIMO will be the “first phase” and will “provide a significant increase to the capacity of the current 4G wireless network,” he said. A massive MIMO system “can deliver a greater than 3X data capacity increase in the same spectrum of a current 4G base station,” he said.