China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile operator, has deployed a wideband massive MIMO site on its network in Shanghai using equipment from Huawei.
The deployment allows a single module to support three carriers on the 2.6 GHz band, boosting the spectral efficiency of cells threefold, Huawei said. The live network demonstrated peak cell throughput rates of 72 Mb/s on the uplink and 630 Mb/s on the downlink. The solution provides an uplink eight-stream capability configuration to enhance the uplink performance of the operator’s TD-LTE network, according to the company.
The two companies claim the deployment is the world’s first commercial wideband massive MIMO site.
Huawei said in a statement that it marks “a great leap forward for large-scale commercial massive MIMO technology and the beginning of a planned series of events outlined in the timetable for the 5G large-bandwidth evolution”.