NTT DOCOMO of Japan and vendor partner NEC have announced what they claim is the world’s first successful use of 5.5Gbps throughput in eight mobile stations using beamforming with inter-base station coordination between two base stations in the same area, using the 4.5GHz band for 5G communications.
In the trial, the pair confirmed they utilised ‘beamforming coordinated between two base stations consisting of signal processors and massive-element antennas through digital signal processing and conducted a simultaneous communication experiment with eight users (i.e. mobile stations) in Kawasaki City’. Their press release goes on to note that the tests demonstrated 5.5Gbps throughput by using the eight mobile stations and beamforming through small base stations that connect antennas with a total of 128 elements with signal processing via optical fibre. ‘The experiment verified beamforming with inter-base station coordination where base stations located in two different places coordinated to control the beam.’