Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) used its 5G radio prototypes with MU-MIMO and beam-tracking to deliver more than 25 Gbps throughput in a 5G field trial, and it plans a live demonstration next week of its 5G radio prototypes at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain.
Executives from NTT DoCoMo and Korea Telecom witnessed Ericsson's 5G demo in operator field trials. The Ericsson radio prototypes are delivering more than 12 Gbps per user in live networking environments with downlink throughput of more than 25 Gbps using MU-MIMO.
The live demonstration for both NTT DoCoMo and KT took place indoors on the Ericsson campus in Kista, Sweden, and will also be featured at MWC. The 5G radio prototypes are still pretty big -- the size of a piece of carry-on luggage -- but they support the equivalent of 40 LTE carriers.
"We are very pleased that Ericsson 5G Radio Prototypes have enabled this great achievement through the 5G technical collaboration between Ericsson and DoCoMo, which has been going on for years," said Seizo Onoe, executive vice president and CTO at NTT. "Both companies are already conducting joint outdoor trials to understand how 5G will really perform in the field. This will enable us to plan for the new and enhanced services that we will be able to offer with 5G. We will be in a good position to highlight our commercial 5G capabilities in 2020."
Dongmyun Lee, CTO at KT, said that KT is on track to preview new 5G services at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympics. "We appreciate that Ericsson is enabling us to trial 5G capabilities with the advanced features, like beam tracking, MU-MIMO and Massive MIMO, that we will need as we plan for 5G commercialization," Lee said.
Ericsson said the multi-Gbps speeds delivered by its 5G prototypes will support growing mobile broadband and video demand on smartphones and other mobile devices, and will also provide a viable and cost-effective alternative to residential fiber connections.
Like other vendors and operators, Ericsson anticipates the addition of new radio access technologies, often in higher frequencies. The company's 5G radio prototypes' support for MU-MIMO, Massive MIMO and beam-tracking means they will be able to take advantage of millimeter wave spectrum, which holds "tremendous promise for 5G services, despite its significant challenges," according to the company.
For more:
- see this press release
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