Nokia, on Monday announced that it will introduce its 4.9G technologies by the end of 2017, allowing operators to dramatically enhance their network performance and manage the significantly higher infrastructure demands on the path to 5G. A 4.9G massive MIMO Adaptive Antenna will also increase cell capacity by up to five times, while a new 4.5G Pro AirScale Micro Remote Radio Head (RRH) will allow operators to take advantage of unlicensed spectrum to enable Gigabit speeds.

Nokia 4.9G will provide significant increases in capacity and several Gigabits of speed-per-second on the path to 5G. The introduction of the AirScale massive MIMO Adaptive Antenna is a milestone in the delivery of 4.9G, driving capacity increases for megacity deployments. At Mobile World Congress 2017, Nokia - working with the US service provider Sprint - will demonstrate the technology using 3D Beamforming software to deliver throughput gains of up to eightfold uplink and fivefold downlink. The demonstration will leverage commercially-available devices operating on TD-LTE band 41.

"Nokia introduced 4.5G Pro and 4.9G last year to allow operators to implement network capacity increases where and when it made sense for them. Now we are delivering features that will maximize their resources, speed up deployment times and cut power and costs especially in the most densely populated locations. We are making 4.5G Pro a commercial reality now and working with customers to innovate with solutions to their network densification and evolution challenges in 4.9G and beyond," said Frank Weyerich, head of Mobile Networks Products at Nokia.

The AirScale massive MIMO launch complements Nokia 4.9G Cloud RAN technology. At Mobile World Congress, Nokia will give a world-first demonstration of Cloud Single RAN running virtualized 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G radios and 2G and 3G network controllers over commercial AirScale and AirFrame platforms.

A range of AirScale Active Antennas will complement Nokia's existing commercial Radio Antenna System. In addition to the AirScale massive MIMO Adaptive Antenna, the AirScale Compact Active Antenna will provide an even leaner site solution that increases performance and lowers operators' costs.

Nokia will also make 4.5G Pro Gigabit data speeds a reality now for operators with limited and disparate blocks of spectrum, while allowing them to densify networks with the commercial introduction of a new AirScale Micro Remote Radio Head (RRH). This will allow macro sites to leverage unlicensed spectrum using Licensed Assisted Access (LAA).

As cities grow and the world's population becomes increasingly urban, operators need to rapidly densify networks in city locations while slashing costs and CO2 emissions. Nokia is introducing enhancements to its AirScale base station that will allow them to do this with the most compact footprint while reducing operational costs by up to 40 percent. The new AirScale multiband remote radio heads include the world's first triple-band example, while Nokia is also launching new frequency variants. Nokia Zero Emission 3.0 will reduce operators' energy consumption by up to 50 percent using new hardware and software features while the Intelligent Deployment Platform uses automation to accelerate AirScale deployment life cycle by up to 40 percent.

Nokia continues to innovate using 4.5G Pro and 4.9G technologies and will highlight many of its ultra-broadband developments at Mobile World Congress, including:

• World-first demonstration of 4.9G AirScale technology to achieve 3 Gbps peak rates
• World-first demonstration of 4.5G Pro CBRS-FDD four carrier aggregation connected to Nokia Bell Labs Spectrum Access System (SAS) using a commercial chipset
• Nokia Bell Labs Liquid Cooling demonstration converting 80 percent of base station waste into useful heat to reduce site power costs.