Seamless support while moving through the development of automatic handover technology between base stations

KT announced that it has developed automatic handover technology between base stations based on the Pyeongchang 5G standard, built a 5G network on a 3km stretch of public road, and completed mobility verification throughout the entire section.

In this verification, a vehicle equipped with a 5G terminal tested real-time high-capacity streaming, mobile high-definition CCTV, and interactive hologram services while driving, and all were demonstrated stably without interruption.

'Handover' is a technology that enables a terminal to receive uninterrupted service even when moving from a connected base station to another base station. Beamforming-based handover technology is particularly essential to support the mobility of 5G terminals in the 28GHz band. The 'handover' technology applied to the 5G road network performs real-time beam tracking handover between base stations as the terminal moves.

This is the first time that a 'handover' has been successfully tested over the entire length of a 3km public road, rather than just testing the mobility of the terminal by manually setting up some base stations in a limited space. In addition, by confirming that various 5G services are provided stably without interruption even while on the move, KT verified that its 5G handover technology is at a commercially viable level.

Prior to this, KT successfully verified gigabit-class data transmission via 5G in a Seoul-Incheon Airport Railroad train car traveling at a maximum speed of 110 km/h last May, and in September, it also succeeded in demonstrating 5G-SLT (Skylife LTE) services by connecting to a 5G network in a vehicle traveling at over 100 km/h on a highway.

Meanwhile, KT recently established an urban testbed on Gangnam-daero in Seoul using base station equipment equipped with 5G standard technology in the 3.5GHz band, a candidate frequency band for 5G, and verified that it can secure the same propagation distance as LTE even at high frequencies by extending the propagation distance through Massive MIMO.

Jeon Hong-beom, Head of the Infrastructure Research Institute at KT's Convergence Technology Institute, said, "By verifying beamforming-based handover technology, a core technology of 5G mobile communication, on public roads, we are fully prepared for the upcoming era of autonomous driving." He added, "KT will strive to build a perfect 5G infrastructure in the future to provide differentiated 5G commercial services to the public."