NTT Docomo trials 5G at 305km/hr

Japan’s NTT Docomo, parent company NTT and vendor NEC have jointly achieved the first 5G transmission between a 28-GHz base station and a 5G mobile station in a car moving at 305km/hr.

The trial also achieved a 1.1Gbps high-speed data transmission to a 5G mobile station moving at 293km/hr as well as fast handover between 5G  base stations and a 5G mobile station moving at 290km/hr.

During the trial at the Japan Automobile Research Institute, a test environment was created using a car traveling at speeds similar to that of Japan’s bullet train high-speed railways.

To overcome the challenges associated with long-range transmission of 28-GHz radio waves, the base and mobile stations were both equipped with beamforming and beam tracking technology.

The 5G base station also used massive MIMO antennas with 96 elements and supporting up to two beams, and two antenna units per base station.

Docomo also succeeded in a wireless live transmission of 4K, 120 frame per second video from a car moving at speeds of 200km/hr using NTT’s real-time 4K high frame rate HEVC codec.

Sony Business Solutions Corporation provided the 4K camera for the trial, while Docomo Team Dandelion Racing manager Dandelion Limited tuned the trial car for an ultra-high-mobility environment and operated the car on the test course.