ZTE, China Mobile complete NB-IoT field trial

ZTE and China Mobile have announced they have completed the operator’s first narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) field test in Guangzhou.

The trial involved the validation of core network, service, terminals and wireless equipment for NB-IoT with both single mode and multi-mode networking.

Testing concentrated on performance, including users’ data rate, delay and coverage enhancements. ZTE provided all the equipment for the trial, including virtual core network, 2T4R base stations and terminals using a ZTE custom-developed chip.

China Mobile is conducting NB-IoT trials in four provinces – Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Fuzhou, and is working with only one vendor in each of these provinces to allow it to deeply study and verify various NB-IoT features.

Guangdong Mobile’s field test is the largest-scale among the four provinces with nearly 200 sites constructed. ZTE said this trial was also the only field test to accomplish specified test items dedicated to the NB-IoT protocol, including all combinations of uplink channels and services specified in NB-IoT protocol standards.

The trial also exclusively supported the sub-carrier interval of 3.75KHz and 15KHz simultaneously, marking the world’s first 3.75KHz test.

ZTE separately announced it has completed verification for its emergency communication solution based on drone technology, in collaboration with the Quanzhou branch of China Telecom.

The lightweight (15 kilogram) solution comprises a drone equipped with a ZTE Pico base station and customer premises equipment that can be easily transported and deployed to a rescue scene.

The test demonstrated that the drone can complete preparation and be in the air within 10 minutes, and can deliver a downlink peak data rate of 30Mbps and a VoLTE speech quality mean opinion score of 3.3.