Huawei, Unicom complete FDD Massive MIMO field trial

Huawei and China Unicom have completed field verification of what they are billing as the industry’s first FDD-based Massive MIMO technology.

The field test used the existing two-antenna receiving terminal on the 20MHz spectrum and an FDD LTE commercial terminal to achieve a peak network rate of 697.3Mbps, nearly five times that of traditional FDD LTE.

Huawei said the joint test demonstrated that the average mobile phone rate grows up to 87Mbps, enough for the smooth streaming of 4K HD video.

Massive MIMO architecture requires large-scale antenna array elements and RF transceiver channels. Huawei’s solution uses it AAU technology, which integrates RF and antenna elements. The technology also uses 3D user-level beamforming to improve coverage and reduce interference.

Huawei president of FDD products Cao Ming said when end-user devices supporting the 3GPP Release 10, 13 and 16 protocols – which define eight, 16 and 32 port multi-antenna technology respectively – become available, the spectral efficiency of Massive MIMO will improve further.

He said Huawei will continue to drive the development of the FDD LTE Massive MIMO industry chain.

“Our goal is to bring considerable commercial value to operators through innovative technology,” he said.

“This successful field verification between Huawei and China Unicom, once again demonstrated the innovative capability of Huawei’s 4.5G Evolution technology. Huawei’s Massive MIMO product has the ability to evolve to 5G to protect the operator’s investment in the coming 5G era.”