Patent Analysis in the 5G Network

Hui Eva Zhang,Kok Hoe Wong,Victor Chang

doi:10.4018/jgim.20211101.oa28

Abstract

In recent years, 5G has been the focus of research and development in the telecom industry. This paper aims to understand the development trend and technical hot spots of 5G technology through the patent analysis and build a citation network at the assignee organization level. The workflow of the paper is divided into four steps: patent data collection and cleaning, patent overview analysis, network creation and analysis, O-I index analysis. This article collected the patent data from the United States patent and trademark office (USPTO). We understand the application trend, technical hot spots, and leading players in the 5G domain through the patent overview analysis. We comprehend the structure and characteristics of the network and critical nodes from network topology analysis. By using O-I index analysis, we learn the flow of 5G technology knowledge between the organizations. This paper provides a useful analytical model for the patent analysis and technological knowledge flow in a specific field, which can be applied to patent analysis in other fields.

Highlights

Introduction4G, deployed in the 2010s, provides a theoretical download rate at the speed of 1Gbit/s and 60-98 ms delay (ITU, 2018)
This paper provides a useful analytical model for the patent analysis and technological knowledge flow in a specific field, which can be applied to patent analysis in other fields
The graph indicates the counts of applied patents each year in the 5G network began to increase quickly after the year 2013 and reached a peak in 2017, and the number of granted patents each year reached the top at the year of 2017 and began to decrease since

Summary

Introduction

4G, deployed in the 2010s, provides a theoretical download rate at the speed of 1Gbit/s and 60-98 ms delay (ITU, 2018). While 5G, deployed in the 2020s, affords theoretical download rate at the speed of 10Gbit/s and less than 1ms delay. 5G could theoretically offer ten times the speed of 4G, as well as millions of connections and ultra-low latency, which are fundamental to the Internet of things (IoT) (Zhang, 2019). In a place where unseamed wide-area coverage is required, the 5G network system can equip customers with high-data-rate services at all times, no matter where they are. It is broadly agreed that 5G networks should solve six problems that 4G networks have not adequately solved, such as higher capacity, higher data rates, lower end-to-end latency, large-scale device connectivity, lower costs and consistent quality of experience (Gupta and Jha, 2015)

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