Nokia announced that US telecom operator Sprint will conduct the live demonstration of a 5G New Radio (NR) connection over a dual mode-capable Massive MIMO radio at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 Americas.
Telecom engineers will use Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum, Nokia’s AirScale Base Station and Massive MIMO Active Antenna, and VIAVI 500 5G test device emulator for the first 5G NR demo in the US.

The 5G demo highlights Sprint’s approach using its 2.5 GHz spectrum and Massive MIMO technology to deploy mobile 5G in the first half of 2019.

The live 5G NR system connection using a Massive MIMO Active Antenna can support up to 120 MHz of spectrum in 2.5 GHz. The Nokia AirScale Massive MIMO Active Antenna is expected to deliver up to 3 Gbps peak downlink throughput for a single sector over 5G and LTE simultaneously using Sprint’s spectrum.

This enables Sprint to offer both 4G LTE and 5G on the same radio. 5G will enable a great experience using 4K and 8K video streaming, and applications such as HD Virtual Reality, said John Saw, chief technology officer of Sprint.

Marc Rouanne, president of Mobile Networks, Nokia, said: “This joint 5G NR demonstration is another proof point of our innovative work with Sprint as part of their Next-Gen Network strategy.”

Nokia and Sprint, a SoftBank-owned telecom operator, will be showcasing other 5G demonstrations including low latency use cases for public safety and car platooning, and an Augmented Reality demo for Enterprise.