Huawei hailed the success of its researchers in developing new air interfaces for 5G technology that it plans to demonstrate at the forthcoming Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, but rival Ericsson is keeping it in check with a new 5G test bed.
The Chinese infrastructure vendor said its research and development (R&D) staff are gearing up to demonstrate breakthroughs in 5G air interfaces covering virtualised radio access and new RF technologies. Huawei stated that the air interface is the most essential and significant element in developing the next generation networks, and that its heavy investment in R&D has paid off in the form of the new air interface technologies.
Huawei's team developed self-adaptive and software defined air interface designs based on Sparse Code Multiple Access (SCMA)--a non-orthogonal access technology--and Filtered-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (F-OFDM) technology. The company said tests of the 5G air interface design proved it can improve spectral efficiency, increase connectivity and reduce latency.
The results of those tests mean Huawei's new air interface designs will meet the demands of Internet of Things (IoT) networks, and bandwidth-intensive applications including virtual reality, it stated.
Huawei also plans to demonstrate a 5G air interface architecture at the 2015 MWC that it said is capable of supporting full duplex prototype technology featuring multi-path fading cancellation and large bandwidth. The company said tests of the new architecture resulted in a 200 per cent improvement in spectral efficiency.
The company also plans to use the MWC to showcase new technologies covering smart cities, cloud connectivity, machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, and user experience enhancements.
Not to be outdone, rival Ericsson today announced it will demonstrate its latest 5G test bed at MWC, as the industry pushes to launch the first commercial networks in 2020.
The company said the test bed has already hit throughput of 5 Gbps in testing, and that it will demonstrate 5G-LTE dual connectivity and 5G multipoint connectivity during the Congress.
Arun Bansal, SVP and head of Ericsson's Business Unit Radio division, said "innovation meets implementation" in the company's 5G radio test bed. "It is certainly a reflection of our commitment to 5G technology leadership but it's also where we test and expand the limits of how mobility will transform society," he said.
For more:
- read Huawei's 5G air interface announcement
- view this separate Huawei release
- see this Ericsson statement
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