ZTE has set records for 5G, hitting 19 Gbps in China’s National 5G tests.
In a press release on Monday ZTE announced the completion of seven major testing scenarios. The testing was part of the second phase of China’s National tests, conducted in Beijing. These included tests for continuous wide coverage, eMBB (enhanced mobile broadband) at sub-6GHz, eMBB at millimeter-wave frequencies, uRLLC (ultra-Reliable and Low Latency Communications), eMTC (massive Machine Type Communications), and two hybrid scenarios.
The industry record-breaking 19 Gbps was demonstrated in an eMBB@Sub6GHz test scenario using a 3.5 GHz pre-commercial base station with 28 streams for multiple users. This comes in well above the International Telecommunication Union standard of 10 Gbps and provides more spatial division streams than the industry standard of 16 streams.
ZTE also demonstrated the use of a 36 GHz base station in a high-frequency eMBB test, with a 4-stream rate of 13 Gbps even when one test terminal supported under 1 GHz. In an mMTC scenario, ZTE demonstrated the ability to increase the overload rate of connected terminals by 600 percent. They leveraged MUSA (multi-user shared access technology) with an equivalent massive IoT access performance of 90 million – also well above ITU standards.
Verification of ZTE’s pre-commercial 5G products has now been completed as a result of this test. They also tested interconnections with instruments and chips from other manufacturers, and ran several hybrid test scenarios. The hybrid test scenarios included creating a network which supported air interfaces in eMBB, mMTC (massive Machine Type Communications), and uRLLC scenarios using network slicing and base stations at sub-6GhZ. Some of these results showed a single-cell peak rate of 15 Gbps and an air interface latency lower than 0.416 ms, with a massive connectivity capacity with more than 90 million connections/MHz/hour/km.
China is pushing for eMBB testing in particular because the use of multiple streams works well in high-density urban areas. ZTE teamed up with China Mobile to test enhanced 5G Mobile Broadband in Guangzhou University Town in June.
