Huawei has used multi-user MIMO technology in what it has claimed is the first “large scale” trial of 5G radio access technology.
The vendor held the trial with NTT DOCOMO in Chengdu, China, and streamed live footage of it to its booth at the CEATEC JAPAN 2015 trade show.
The test involved 24 user devices being connected to a macro cell on the sub-6GHz band at the same time. It also used Spare Code Multiple Access and Filtered OFDM, which Huawei is pushing as new 5G radio access technologies.
Huawei said the trial demonstrated cell average downlink throughput of 1.34GBps, peaking at 3.6GBps on the 100MHz ultra-wide band. The vendor said these speeds were 10 times that as those on single layer, single user MIMO tech, and demonstrated how potential 5G technology could enable greater levels of spectrum efficiency.
Takehiro Nakamura, Vice President and Managing Director of NTT DOCOMO’s 5G Laboratory, said: “As the first in the world to succeed with such a large multi-user environment test, this is an important milestone. This is very encouraging as the industry works to commercialise 5G by 2020. I look forward to even more impressive results when we move to the next phase of field trial in Japan.”
Huawei is planning to launch its first 5G pilot networks in 2018, in addition to other vendors, with interoperability testing completed a year later and the first commercial networks going live from 2020.