Chinese smartphone and wireless equipment company Huawei and operator China Unicom teamed up to hit nearly 700 Mbps in what the companies claim is the first completed field test of Frequency Division Duplex (FDD)-based Massive MIMO technology.
According to a press release from Huawei, the trial utilized an existing two-antenna receiving terminal on 20 MHz of spectrum to achieve a peak network speed of 697.3 Mbps. That figure is nearly five times the traditional rate of FDD LTE. With the aforementioned specifications, Huawei noted the average mobile phone speed increased up to 87 Mbps, which it said is enough to support streaming of 4K high-definition video.
Cao Ming, president of Huawei’s FDD product line, said Massive MIMO is one of the key solutions in its 4.5G Evolution technology.
“Our goal is to bring considerable commercial value to operators through innovative technology,” Ming commented. “Huawei’s Massive MIMO product has the ability to evolve to 5G to protect the operator’s investment in the coming 5G era.”
Huawei’s press release noted 3GPP’s Release 10 defined an eight-port multi-antenna technology, and subsequent Releases 13 and 14 defined 16-port and 32-port multi-antenna technologies, respectively. Once terminals supporting such protocols are commercialized, the spectral efficiency of Massive MIMO will be even greater, the company indicated. Huawei said it will “continue to optimize its products and drive the FDD LTE Massive MIMO industry chain to mature.”
Sprint, the only carrier stateside to use FDD, is also exploring the use of Massive MIMO on its network.
During the launch of its HPUE technology in New York City back in December, Sprint CTO John Saw and COO Gunther Ottendorfer said Sprint is hard at work on Massive MIMO, which it said can offer a capacity boost of up to 10x over traditional radios. They said Sprint is currently testing a 64×64 Massive MIMO prototype, and the technology is “coming soon” to Sprint’s network.
Filed Under: Infrastructure
