3 March 2022, Shenzhen, China - ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the mobile internet, together with the industry experts from leading operators, equipment manufacturers, chip manufacturers and consulting companies, has explored on how 5G millimeter wave is unlocking the full potential of 5G on March 2 at GSMA’s 5G mmWave Summit during MWC Barcelona 2022.

At the summit, ZTE’s Senior Solution Architect, Mr. Shen Yang, has introduced the key applications and early adopter markets of 5G mmWave in a speech titled “Key experience & exploration in mmWave application".

The upsurge of millimeter wave deployment is gradually coming. It’s estimated that up to now, 192 operators in more than 48 countries have invested in millimeter wave. Besides, the rich spectrum of millimeter wave brings greater bandwidth and broader application prospects. The deployment of 5G low band has been widely carried out. 

However, the development of millimeter wave is limited by its own characteristics, and the application scenarios are still being explored step by step. 

According to Shen Yang, ZTE has explored four major application scenarios of FWA, Backhaul, ToB and ToC scenarios, based on its leading 5G deployment experience and in-depth technical research.

Through innovative network sharing, ZTE has realized the FWA network commercial launch of Fastweb in Italy. In the Backhaul scenario, the company has effectively expanded the application scenario of millimeter wave, leveraging the advantage of large bandwidth of millimeter wave. Besides, combining the large bandwidth of uplink with 1D3U frame structure, ZTE has boosted the development of ToB industry significantly. The company has also continued to explore the in-depth application of outdoor hotspot and indoor large-capacity in ToC scenario while conducting extensive technical verifications. 

“Technological innovation is the driving force for the development of millimeter wave, which can effectively improve the inherent shortcomings of millimeter wave,” said Shen Yang, "ZTE continues to increase R&D investment, and has made a range of achievements in millimeter wave technology innovations.”

ZTE flexibly adjusts the frame structure according to business requirements, system load, service perception, spectrum efficiency and other dimensions to achieve the optimal solution for business scenarios. The company deploys millimeter wave flexibly in different NSA and SA architectures and especially, the performance of SA NR-DC test is excellent, which lays a good foundation for the commercial use of millimeter wave NR-DC. In addition, to solve the problem of millimeter wave coverage, ZTE has created the industry-leading RIS (Reconfigurable Intelligent metaSurface) prototype product based on millimeter wave, which has achieved remarkable results in controllable beam serving weak field coverage and in improving coverage capacity and system performance. 

5G millimeter wave boasts the technical advantages of rich spectrum resources, great bandwidth and easy combination with beamforming, which can fully release the full potential of 5G, according to Shen Yang. 

“It is one of the core enabling technologies in high-speed access, industrial automation and virtual reality. With rich business scenarios, the demand for communication capacity will be more diversified. Also millimeter wave can be flexibly adapted to the air interface. Relying on the advantages of rich spectrum resources, it will better meet the diversified and differentiated communication business needs.” added Shen Yang.

Moving forward, ZTE will continue its investment in R&D in the millimeter wave field, and keep working with global operators and partners to build and explore a new millimeter wave ecosystem.