A joint massive MIMO test conducted by Huawei and SoftBank delivered a peak downlink rate of more than 1 Gbps on 3.5 GHz spectrum, the pair said Friday.
According to a press release, the companies tested massive MIMO and “multi-carrier technologies” using 40 MHz of the 3.5 GHz band in Tokyo, Japan, in what Huawei called the “world’s first massive MIMO trial” on the band. The trial yielded a top downlink speed of 1.4 Gbps, Huawei said.
Huawei said the test follows the deployment of a series of commercial massive site for SoftBank in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, Japan it has completed since September. The move to 3.5 GHz, Huawei indicated, comes as it has taken the lead in completing such tests on the 3.5 GHz band to help provide SoftBank with the most advanced technology for its deployments in 3.5 GHs spectrum.
“The 3.5 GHz band, with its abundant bandwidth resources, has already gained a reputation as one of the most popular bands throughout the world. This offers a great opportunity for the global development of LTE TDD,” Huawei wrote in its release. “The 3.5 GHz Massive MIMO test further explores the latent potential of 3.5 GHz spectrum, and is expected to open up a new commercial era of LTE-Advanced.”
Separately, Huawei also announced its completion of phone form factor field tests on wide-bandwidth 5G terminals on 3.5 GHz spectrum as part of the second phase of China IMT-2020 5G tests led by China Academy of Information and Communication Technology (CAICT).
Huawei reported the 5G terminal prototype – which supported a bandwidth of 200 MHz – was configured with a miniature multi-antenna to transmit and receive RF signals, and supported a software-defined baseband. The test terminal was constructed in compliance with air interface parameters laid out in the 3GPP’s New Radio (NR) standard.
The trials were conducted in Beijing, using a 5G base station operating on 3.5 GHz spectrum with 23 fixed and mobile terminals. The base station supported 64 radio frequency transceivers and 24 MIMO data streams. According to Huawei, the peak downlink throughput for each 5G terminal can reach as much as 5 Gbps.
“For enhanced-Mobile-Broadband (eMBB) test cases, with the Massive-MIMO macro-basestation set up scenario, the 5G terminal throughput can reach up to 5 Gigabits per second at the downlink,” Huawei noted. “The test results prove the feasibility of key 5G technologies and further validates the small size multi-antennas technology for 5G terminals in the phone form-factor, representing significant progress in 5G technology innovation.”
During the first part of Huawei’s field tests in Beijing, the company unveiled its 5G NR solution, which it said provides multi-standard coverage over a single air interface. In tests of three major scenarios, the solution proved capable of meeting the ITU performance specifications of 10 Gbps throughput for more than one million simultaneous connections at air interface latency of under 1 millisecond.
In the interoperability tests, Huawei said its 5G prototype system demonstrated compatibility with instruments from Rohde & Schwarz, Keysight Technologies, DT LinkTester, Starpoint, and Spirent, as well as chips from SPREADTRUM, and MediaTek.
Huawei said it will be on hand showcasing its products and solutions at Mobile World Congress in Hall 3.
