Vodafone and Huawei have completed the first trial of Massive-MIMO technology on a 2.6GHz TDD network in Europe.
The UK operator said the results of the test, which was held on its commercial network at its Newbury campus in south west England, created spectrum efficiency in the network.
Santiago Tenorio, Head of Networks at Vodafone Group, said: “Demand for high-bandwidth services continues to grow quickly and the need for us to increase capacity within the limits of the spectrum available has never been greater. Massive MIMO may be the answer.
“We continue to test the technology, but as the availability of compatible handsets increases, we believe Massive MIMO could benefit many of our customers, particularly in areas where there are a large number of devices, such as city centres, train stations, business districts and stadiums.”
Last week, Vodafone and Huawei announced 5G trials using a combination of filtered-OFDM, sparse code multiple access and polar code with multi-user MIMO. Peak throughputs of 18GBps were hit by using 200MHz of spectrum in the sub-6GHz band, with air interface latencies of 0.5ms.
The pair have also worked closely on the development and standardisation of NB-IoT technology, with Vodafone confirming its launch markets this week.