What is bandwith part (BWP) in 5G

BWP is a new concept introduced in 5G mainly to reduce the power consumption of the mobile phone as the 5G bandwidth is large up to 400MHz. 

3GPP NR supports very large operating bandwidths in comparison with 4G

1) FR1(Frequency Range 1):

– f < 6GHz(low frequency) that support bandwith  up to 100Mhz

2) FR2 (Frequency Range 2):

 – f > 6GHz(High frequency or millimeter wave(above 24 GHz)) that support bandwith up to 400 Mhz

But as we know that, LTE was designed with a belief that all the devices are capable of working with a maximum carrier bandwidth of 20MHz.

Impact on device 

In 5G bandwidth can range minimum from 5MHz to maximum 400MHz. High performance is required for the end user UE if  it’s support a maximum of 400MHz and this can be a disadvantage for reducing the cost of the UE. 

It is impossible for one UE to occupy the entire 400M bandwidth at the same instant. At the same time it will be undoubtedly waste of performance if the UE adopts the sampling rate corresponding to 400M bandwidth. 

That means that supporting wide bandwith for UE will:

– increase the power consumption of the device

– increase RF and baseband complexity

BWP Introduction in NR

So to overcome this a better approach is used in NR that allows the UEs with different bandwidth  capabilities to operate in a wide cell with smaller instantaneous bandwidth.

Many BWP can be configured in the same band and no more thatn 4 BWP can be configured for the same UE with only one BWP actif at moment t.