G NR and NG-RAN It is not only about creating that narrower beam of radio frequency energy; Massive MIMO antennas should be able to do that for numerous subscribers within the cell. So, the beam will constantly be flicking around to service different subscribers, which is called beam steering. Beam steering Beam steering is the concept of beams following a UE in the network. If the UE does not move too quickly, it can constantly provide feedback to the antenna SO that the antenna can adjust the direction of the beam that it is sending. It is great for slow-moving UEs, while it is more challenging for fast- moving UEs for the beam to keep track of them. Basically, it depends on the speed of the UE whether the beam steering is used or not. Beam Steering Slow-moving pedestrian Static Beam FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) Beam Steering Challenging for fast-moving car Figure 1.12 - Beam steering with Massive MIMO Beam forming and beam steering are considered to be critical areas associated with 5G RAN deployments. Cloud RAN The final point related to 5G NR and NG-RAN techniques and technologies is the notion of cloud RAN. Essentially, cloud RAN sees the introduction of virtualization technologies to the radio access network. With cloud RAN, each individual gNB has separate compute and processing resources. The idea behind cloud RAN is to take that compute and storage capability and move it to a Centralized Unit (CU). This CU is responsible for conducting the processing and computing activities of all these gNBs. So, the idea here is the compute capabilities are centrally located in a data center and all that remains is down at the cell site are distributed units. The distributed units are the transmit and receive elements of the gNB. This helps RAN deployment to be simplified and potentially cheaper. The central controlling element fundamentally is sending Introduction to 5G to the distributed units what they need to transmit. The distributed units are simply responsible for transmitting, receiving, and exchanging that tra