Deutsche Telekom and Huawei have partnered together to launch, what they describe as, 'the fastest 3.5 GHz LTE TDD Massive MIMO field trial.
The field trial was with 20MHz bandwidth at the 3.5GHz band, reaching speeds of 750Mbps.
The news comes days after the two companies announced the launch of "Europe's first" 5G network and the trial uses fully integrated commercial smartphones to set this new record. Sony modified some of its Sony Xperia Smartphones to support the combination of massive MIMO and 256QAM technologies. Specifically, Sony Xperia XZ Premium Smartphones were customised to include TDD capable at 3.5GHz spectrum.
Izumi Kawanishi, EVP of Sony Mobile Communications, said: "We are very proud that Sony proved once again, in the great and long lasting cooperation with partner Deutsche Telekom, that our new technology flagship Xperia XZ Premium is a leading smartphone in the industry. We have strong ambitions to continue that way with 5G as the next step."
Better spectral efficiency equals increased network capacity, Massive MIMO technology uses its large-scale multi-antenna array to generate a more precise user-specific beam and use the multi-user beamforming technology to increase the spectrum efficiency by multiple times. Using Massive MIMO technologies, users will still experience this improved service even in the most crowed cells like business centres, stadiums, town centres, train stations, big events, residential areas and universities. In addition, Massive MIMO can also support coverage for high rise buildings with its 3D-Beamforming that is capable of working in both horizontal and vertical directions. Also with TDD spectrum Massive MIMO is compatible with current LTE TDD terminals.
"Massive MIMO is an established LTE technology to achieve superb spectrum efficiency improvements. It will also be a key technology for achieving greater efficiency gains in higher frequency ranges associated with 5G new radio," said Martin Bouchard, head of network strategy, technical planning and rollout at Deutsche Telekom in Germany.
Deutsche Telekom, as a member of the Telecom Infra Project, only a few days ago launched three new initiatives focussed on millimetre wave technology and development. Further emphasising the company’s commitment to innovation in technology and network infrastructure.
Commenting on the successful trials, Wang Yang, vice president of Huawei TDD product line, said: "3.5GHz is a major spectrum asset of Deutsche Telekom. This joint technical innovation is another big milestone in terms of long-term strategic cooperation between both parties, Huawei is quite happy to cooperate with Deutsche Telekom to unleash its great potential in 4G as well as 5G. Massive MIMO is an ideal companion for 3.5GHz band in terms of both capacity and coverage. We believe this joint innovation will bring technology advance as well as business success to Deutsche Telekom."