Telecom equipment and software maker Huawei says it is leading the 5G developments for advancing the roll out of 5G networks.
Among its achievements, Huawei says it was the first to pass the recent field performance tests of 5G New Radio (NR) technology in the 3.5 GHz band.
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Recently, both Nokia and Ericsson revealed developments related to 5G NR technology for global telecom operators.
5G is taking shape
According to Viavi Solutions, 25 mobile operators have already announced that they are lab testing “5G”. Among those, 12 report having progressed to field testing. An additional four operators have announced their plans for 5G trials.
Ericsson and 5G
US telecom operator Verizon will be offering 5G pre-commercial services to select customers in 11 markets in the first half of 2017 on its 5G network. Verizon, in association with technology companies Samsung and Ericsson, has built new cell sites in customer locations. Huawei was not part of this major development.
ALSO READ: Verizon plans 5G launch shortly, beating AT&T
SK Telecom – in association with Ericsson — conducted the live demonstration of end-to-end 5G trial system on December 21, 2016, in Ericsson’s lab in Kista, Sweden. It used Cloud Core, virtual RAN and over-the-air NR/LTE interworking.
In yet another 5G trial, Telefonica, on December 22, 2016, conducted similar demo involving Cloud RAN. Telefonica achieved end-to-end data rates of more than 1Gbps and roundtrip latencies of about 4 milliseconds to a gateway outside of the core in the live demonstration. The 5G New Radio (NR) used 800MHz bandwidth, running on 15GHz.
Nokia and 5G
AT&T – in partnership with Nokia — are collaborating to advance 5G technology in the 39 GHz band by recently completing fixed wireless 5G tests with AT&T’s Internet TV streaming service, DIRECTV NOW. Nokia achieved this world’s first by delivering a 39 GHz system based on its AirScale radio access platform.
The testing of DIRECTV NOW also demonstrates 5G’s promise of providing new experiences to end users with its ultra-low network latency and higher throughput – all important requirements for both media services and the industrial Internet.
Intel and Nokia will be opening two 5G solutions labs to accelerate the commercial readiness of the 5G wireless technology. The 5G acceleration labs will be located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and in Espoo, Finland.
Huawei and 5G
Huawei has also conducted tests of cross-compatibility with a range of industry-standard hardware. The field tests were conducted as part of the second phase of 5G trials in China and were led by the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group.
The field tests officially began when an IMT-2020 (5G)-led testing group established a 5G trial zone in Beijing on Dec. 29, 2016. This followed the Nov. 20, 2016 release of the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group’s requirements for the second phase of 5G trials.
China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom and Docomo Beijing Labs are part of the testing group.
Huawei’s 5G NR solution provides multi-standard coverage over a single air interface. The 5G NR solution is capable of meeting the ITU performance specifications of 10 Gbps throughput for over one million simultaneous connections at air interface latency of under 1 ms.
Huawei’s 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.
“China’s 5G trials are verifying new technologies at a stage where the specifications have not yet been finalized,” said Yang Chaobin, president of Huawei’s 5G Product Line. “This will be beneficial to the ongoing work of drafting these specifications.”
Huawei has also completed field tests on 5G terminals with a wide bandwidth of 200 MHz on the 3.5 GHz carrier.
The 5G terminal throughput can reach up to 5 Gigabits per second at downlink. The test results prove the feasibility of key 5G technologies and validate the small size multi-antennas technology for 5G terminal in the phone form-factor.
The trial cellular networks consists of a 5G base station operating on the 3.5 GHz (C band) frequency carrier and 23 fixed and mobile terminals. The base station supports 64 radio frequency transceviers and 24 MIMO data streams. 5G terminal supports multi-MIMO streams reception with a bandwidth of 200 MHz.
Ericsson and Nokia are making strong progress in the 5G field because their main activities are in the US and Europe and some Asian countries.
Baburajan K
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