Shanghai China Mobile and Huawei launch world's first commercial wideband 3D MIMO

[Shanghai, China, Nov 8, 2016] China Mobile Shanghai Branch and Huawei have jointly deployed the world's first wideband 3D Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) site. This is another key milestone, after the world's first 3D MIMO solution was launched in Shanghai in September 2015.

This achievement marks a great leap forward for large-scale commercial 3D MIMO technology and is the beginning of a planned series of events outlined in the timetable for large-bandwidth 5G evolution. This solution has significantly improved single site capability in the 4G era indicated by a 5-fold increase, achieving 5-6 Giga capability of a single site.

The 3D MIMO solution is the primary wireless innovation project that China Mobile has predominantly focused on in 2016. This solution can greatly improve 4G network spectral efficiency and can help effectively handle any capacity challenges encountered during rapid mobile development.

This solution is perfectly suited for the effective enhancement of coverage and interference mitigation capabilities to meet specialized coverage requirements (such as coverage of high-rise buildings). As a significant component of China Mobile's prospective research on 5G technologies, these activities help steer us towards an important direction for the further development and future of 5G evolution.

New-generation three-carrier 3D MIMO solution deployed in Shanghai

This newly introduced next-generation 3D MIMO solution is oriented specifically towards large-scale commercial use for China Mobile and assumes the lead in providing large-bandwidth capabilities. A single module supports activation of three carriers on 2.6GHz. Distributed network supports smooth evolution to CloudRAN architecture and ensures that hardware is sufficiently prepared and ready for 5G evolution. The average spectral efficiency of cells can be improved by 3-fold. Along with the rapid development of video services, the spectral efficiency can be increased to more than 5-fold. Huawei’s in-house-developed chips, new materials, and new techniques are used to provide increasingly compact and lighter site equipment.

The efficient and fast delivery of this solution is guaranteed as only one optical fiber and one power cable are required to ensure smooth deployment from an engineering perspective. The adoption of the latest chips helps provide processing capabilities 4-fold higher than that of the industry standard, clearly demonstrating the performance advantages inherent to 3D MIMO.

Huawei's next-generation 3D MIMO solution leads the way in providing an uplink 8-stream capability configuration to continuously enhance the uplink performance of China Mobile's TD-LTE networks. The live network in Shanghai acts as a verification platform, with impressive peak cell throughput rates reaching a 72 Mbps uplink, and a 630 Mbps downlink, effectively dealing with any challenges related to network capacity.

Peak rate test results of uplink 8-stream 3D MIMO

Peak rate test results of downlink 16-stream 3D MIMO

China Mobile has constructed the world's fastest-growing 4G network and must continuously innovate to address growing network development challenges. Shanghai China Mobile will continue to engage in close cooperation with Huawei to develop the capability of applying 5G technologies on 4G networks. The main objectives will be to target new network architectures, service development, continuous innovation, and encourage additional cooperation with partners to improve competitiveness of 4G mobile networks to deliver an optimal MBB user experience.

The future is coming and is well worth the wait.