Why does it need such tight timing? I mean, frequencies, yes, but why inter-base-station timing like that?
Surely any connected device (e.g. a dumb GSM chip) nowadays is operating in the nano second ranges, and there are handshakes and regular updates to the clients... so the clients aren't going to get out of sync with the base-station. And base-stations are presumably operating entirely independently and on different frequencies and handshaking to one another.
So why does one base station have to be so perfectly synchronised to the next within the microsecond ranges for what it basically a large wireless network on reserved frequencies? We don't have that for any other wireless technology that uses all the same tricks and phase-shifting and all sorts as anything that 5G will do.
"The R&D team's distinguished technologist for wireless Jennifer Andreoli-Fang said the rise of microcells poses problems for the of GPS as a synchronisation standard: .... ***and the devices are often deployed indoors where they can't see the satellites.***"
So if they're not seeing the satellites at the moment, what does 5G need them to see satellites for, and why in fact does 5G say that seeing the satellites perfectly isn't even sufficient? I'm confused. I can't imagine any signalling scenario on this kind of level where you need perfect timing synchronisation between two stations which couldn't work it out on their own as part of the signalling handshaking process and maintain it all the while they are in contact and re-handshake if recovering from a fault.
And, hell, surely 5G should just be nothing but protocols-over-IP by now? Haven't we learned yet?