X
Home & Office

Huawei and NTT DoCoMo reach 11Gbps speeds in 5G Japanese field trial

A field trial of 5G network technology by Huawei and NTT DoCoMo has seen them reach speeds of 11.29Gbps over the 4.5GHz spectrum band in Yokohama, Japan.
Written by Corinne Reichert, Contributor

Chinese networking giant Huawei has announced attaining 11.29Gbps throughput speeds and latency of less than 0.5 millisecond during a field trial of 5G in conjunction with Japanese telecommunications provider NTT DoCoMo.

The large-scale field trial, conducted in Yokohama Minato Mirai 21 District over the 4.5GHz spectrum band, made use of new numerology and frame structure according to 3GPP 5G New Radio current standards.

"The macro cell was made up with one base station that works in the 4.5GHz band with 200MHz bandwidth, 64 TRXs, and 23 UEs of both static and mobile types," Huawei explained.

"According to the test, 11.29Gbps total user throughput was achieved with 24 layers, with each UE receiving two layers. The peak spectrum efficiency reached was 79.82bps/Hz/cell. With new frame structure and numerology, less than 0.5ms one-way user plane delay was achieved."

huawei-ntt-docomo-5g-trial-japan.png
(Image: Huawei)

The latency amounted to around one-tenth of that seen on 4G networks.

The trial was part of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between Huawei and DoCoMo in December 2014, which also saw the companies conduct an outdoor field trial of Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) in Chengdu, China, over a year ago.

Huawei said the two companies are continuing to test Massive MIMO; mixed numerology using filtered OFDM (f-OFDM); and combined performance of Sparse Code Multiple Access (SCMA), Polar Code, and f-OFDM in Japan.

"Our success in 5G large-scale field trial in the 4.5GHz band brought the whole industry one step closer to 5G commercialization by 2020," said Takehiro Nakamura, vice president and managing director of NTT DoCoMo's 5G lab.

"DoCoMo and Huawei have been expanding their collaboration on 5G from R&D to international spectrum harmonization initiatives for 5G since December 2014. Together with Huawei, we will continue to promote 5G both from technical and ecosystem perspective."

NTT DoCoMo has also partnered with Finnish networking company Nokia on 5G technology, conducting a trial at the beginning of last year that saw them attain download speeds of 2Gbps across 70GHz millimetre wave (mmWave) spectrum.

Earlier on Wednesday, Huawei also announced a 5G trial in Australia with telecommunications carrier Optus that attained speeds of 35Gbps.

The trial was similarly conducted over the 73GHz mmWave spectrum band using the Polar Code coding mechanism, and was part of Optus' parent company Singtel's MOU with Huawei.

Optus and Huawei earlier this year also conducted a live trial of 4.5G network technology, attaining download speeds of 1.41Gbps.

The trial, completed in February in Optus' Gigasite in Newcastle, saw the companies aggregate 5x 20MHz of Optus' unique network frequency bands, combined with 4x4 MIMO and 256 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) technologies, for peak download speeds of 1.23Gbps and "theoretical maximum speeds" of 1.43Gbps.

Editorial standards