Huawei, on Wednesday announced the world’s first 5G large-scale field trial in the 4.5 GHz band using new numerology and frame structure complying with 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR) current agreements. In the trial jointly conducted with NTT DOCOMO, Inc., 11.29 Gbps total user throughput and less than 0.5 millisecond one way user plane latency were achieved in the macro cell coverage of a real urban application scenario in Yokohama, Japan. This leading-edge breakthrough is of foundational importance to shape the future of 5G and a milestone of the two companies’ joint efforts on 5G field trials.

The test was performed in Yokohama Minato Mirai 21 District, which is one of the largest commercial areas in Japan. The macro cell was made up with one base station that works in the 4.5 GHz band with 200 MHz bandwidth, 64 TRXs and 23 UEs of both static and mobile types. According to the test, 11.29 Gbps total user throughput was achieved with 24 layers with each UE receiving 2 layers. The peak spectrum efficiency reached was 79.82 bps/Hz/cell. With new frame structure and numerology, less than 0.5ms one way user plane delay was achieved. This user plane latency is about one tenth of LTE.

              

After signing MoU on partnership in 5G joint field trials in December 2014, Huawei and DOCOMO succeeded in the world’s first large-scale outdoor field trial of Massive MIMO in Chengdu, China in October 2015. Currently, two companies are moving their large scale field trial to Japan and continue the systematic verification of 5G key technologies such as Massive MIMO, ultra-reliability and low latency, mixed numerology using f-OFDM (filtered OFDM), and combined performance of SCMA (Sparse Code Multiple Access), Polar Code and f-OFDM.

On the success of this joint field trial, Takehiro Nakamura, Vice President and Managing Director of NTT DOCOMO’s 5G Laboratory said “Our success in 5G large-scale field trial in the 4.5 GHz band brought the whole industry one step closer to 5G commercialization by 2020. 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.”

“Huawei is now putting a lot of resource and energy to 5G NR foundational technology development, market development and product solution development. With the expert team we put together, the collaboration between Huawei and DOCOMO is now on the fast track and the progress is very encouraging, this achievement is extremely important to form the foundation of future 5G,” said Dr. Wen Tong, Huawei Fellow and CTO of Huawei Wireless Networks.

3GPP standardization in terms of 5G NR has recently made significant progress because of strong momentum towards the global standard from the entire ecosystem. The 5G industry now focuses on the further consolidation and concentration of the real development of 5G solution. Huawei and DOCOMO will continue to further expand their joint 5G NR test scope, including mobility and large coverage, which are the most important aspects to launch the 5G network.