Commercial Reality to 5G: Cases of Pre5G Massive MIMO

What progress has Pre5G Massive MIMO made within one year since ZTE won the “Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough” award and “CTO’s Choice award” at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February 2016? Let’s take a look at the highlights of Pre5G Massive MIMO in the actual commercial environment.

The commercial trials of Pre5G Massive MIMO have been deployed in 38 cities of 29 provinces in China, where Beijing and Zhejiang rank at the top in the number of sites. Beijing has completed a series of Pre5G validations, verifying that Pre5G Massive MIMO can improve site traffic and the average number of RRC users in the commercial environment. The experimental results show that in the areas where Pre5G Massive MIMO is deployed, the average number of RRC connected users is increased by 24 to 50, the average daily traffic is increased by 28 GB to 35 GB, and the daily downstream traffic of each cell is increased by 53 percent to 82 percent.

On the one hand, Pre5G Massive MIMO alleviates network pressure and reduces the full load probability in busy hours by 30 percent. On the other hand, Pre5G Massive MIMO has good network performance, so the service frequency, rate, and duration are increased.

Zhejiang: The Most Comprehensive Commercial Performance Evaluation of Pre5G Massive MIMO

In 2016, Zhejiang Branch of China Mobile and ZTE verified five topics of Pre5G Massive MIMO in real commercial scenarios, including 3D coverage verification, pressure test for commercial large traffic, air separation performance verification for commercial large traffic, same-frequency networking interference verification, and strategic research on networking interoperation.
● In terms of vertical depth coverage, the 3D coverage verification shows that compared to macro stations on the same site, Pre5G Massive MIMO gains more at middle and far points. The download rate gain is 239 percent and upload rate gain is 284 percent. As it moves towards cell edge, the gains become greater.  With the excellent weak-field coverage capability, Pre5G Massive MIMO is propitious to the vertical coverage of tall buildings.
● In terms of hotspot coverage, the pressure test and air separation performance verification for commercial large traffic indicate that when the RRC connected users in a Pre5G Massive MIMO cell reaches 500, the answer-seizure ratio and switch success ratio are higher than 99 percent. Meanwhile, the air separation performance of Pre5G Massive MIMO is excellent. The upstream 4-flow air separation ratio reaches 76.22 percent with the throughput of 26.25 Mbps, and the downstream 7- or 8-flow ratio is nearly 70 percent with the throughput of 231.6 Mbps. The tests show that Pre5G Massive MIMO is propitious to areas with dense users and heavy traffic.
● In terms of networking, the same-frequency networking interference verification and strategic research on networking interoperation indicate that Pre5G Massive MIMO base stations can inherit the commercial parameters of existing networks and offload traffic. Compared with a normal 4G site, the service beam of a Pre5G Massive MIMO site is narrower, so its same-frequency interference is much smaller than that in a macro station cell.

Many international operators foresee the future trend of traffic growth. They made a strategy of investing in the 5G-oriented mainstream technologies in advance, so as to seize the initiative.

It is reported that Softbank has launched 5G project commercial services at 100 Massive MIMO base stations in 43 cities nationwide since September 2016, and the corresponding 20 GB package has been put on sale, opening a large traffic data era in Japan. SoftBank claimed to be the first operator in the world to put Massive MIMO technology into commercial use. At the beginning of 2016, Softbank and ZTE cooperated on Pre5G Massive MIMO products, and they took a commercial test in Softbank in the first half of 2016. The test results proved the good performance of Pre5G Massive MIMO, and the key performance, such as throughput and mobility, and commercial KPIs meet Softbank’s requirements. Therefore, Pre5G Massive MIMO relieves the capacity pressure of traditional network in heavy traffic and dense urban areas in Japan.

In addition to Japan, Pre5G Massive MIMO is favored in other Asian markets and the European market. For instance, Orange, China Mobile, and ZTE have conducted three-party cooperation on Pre5G Massive MIMO. A1 Telekom Austria chose Pre5G Massive MIMO to guarantee its largest ski event. What’s more, Pre5G Massive MIMO trials are blooming in Austria, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Spain, Saudi Arabia and other countries.

Outlook: Pre5G Massive MIMO 2.0 Will Lead the Gbps Era

On September 20, 2016, ZTE’s Pre5G Massive MIMO 2.0 won the “Most Competitive Technology” award at the PT/EXPO COMM CHINA 2016. Pre5G Massive MIMO 2.0 supports multiple frequency bands and adapts to the mainstream TDD frequency band. With a small size, it fits into the BBU+AAU architecture and is conducive to 5G evolution. It also supports multicarrier CA to meet large capacity requirements of operators. Through 16-flow transmission, it enables the peak traffic rate of a site to exceed 1 Gbps. Pre5G Massive MIMO 2.0 is expected to be put into large-scale commercial use worldwide in 2017.