384 antenna arrays! Huawei's third-generation Massive MIMO continues to lead

Author: Wang Xin Source: IT Times

5G is still making strides around the world. In 2022, the late-developing countries will continue to promote the construction of 5G infrastructure in an all-round way; while the leading countries and regions will set their sights on the further future, with experience improvement, performance upgrades, energy conservation and emission reduction, until they reach the Metaverse.

On February 28, the annual Mobile World Congress MWC 2022 will be held in Barcelona, Spain as scheduled, and this will be the 20th time Huawei has participated in this wireless communication event. In the pre-communication meeting before the conference, Gan Bin, vice president and chief marketing officer of Huawei's wireless network product line, fully demonstrated to the media Huawei's comprehensive wireless products and capabilities for 5Gigaverse, TDD third-generation Massive MIMO products and FDD ultra-wideband multi-channel The latest products and solutions such as antenna series were unveiled.

"The value of 5G's large bandwidth and multi-antenna has been realized." Gan Bin said that the third-generation Massive MIMO products and FDD ultra-wideband multi-antenna series products will achieve double improvement in experience and energy efficiency, while the new generation of wireless network architecture Intelligent RAN AI can be used to realize intelligent business operation, intelligent network optimization, and intelligent operation and maintenance, so that the "Internet of Everything" led by 5G will become "Intelligent Connection of Everything".

"384 antenna array" is far ahead in the industry

So far, more than 200 5G networks have been officially commercialized around the world, serving more than 640 million 5G connections. With the continuous improvement of 5G popularity, 5G network construction has gradually entered the 2.0 era of "intensive cultivation" from "full coverage". How to reduce bit power consumption? How to realize the coordinated development of 5G and 4G? How to achieve continuous coverage of the entire network in TDD and FDD frequency bands? It has become a new topic for telecom operators in the 5G era. Gan Bin believes that "multi-frequency, one network" will be the future trend of operators' wireless network construction. Through high-performance, intelligent and energy-saving next-generation wireless communication base stations, operators will be able to build a ubiquitous gigabit network. Experience the web.

Since the 128 antenna element technology has matured in 2018, Huawei has released the third-generation Massive MIMO this time, including the third-generation MetaAAU and the third-generation BladeAAU series products. Compared with the 192 antenna elements of the second generation Massive MIMO, the third generation Massive MIMO uses 384 antenna elements, which is the first and only in the industry.

From the naming point of view, MetaAAU has already revealed the taste of the metaverse infrastructure, and it also reflects its strong performance guarantee from the side. Through commercial verification in Beijing, Hangzhou, Xiamen and other cities, the third-generation MetaAAU has a 3dB improvement in coverage compared to the traditional 64T AAU, and a 30% improvement in user experience; compared with the traditional 32T AAU, the coverage gain is up to 6dB, and the user experience is improved by 60%; At the same time, when the coverage index remains unchanged, the base station can be configured with a lower transmit power, which reduces the energy consumption by about 30% compared with the traditional AAU, which is equivalent to realizing the hardware capability of 320W through only 160W of power.

The third-generation MetaAAU has also launched ultra-wideband products with a bandwidth of 400MHz and a transmit power of 400W, supporting all discrete frequency bands within C-band 400M, which means that this device can efficiently support the minimalist deployment requirements of co-construction and sharing scenarios. According to reports, The equipment has been co-constructed and shared across frequency bands by three operators in Europe.

This time, Huawei has further enriched the BladeAAU product portfolio, including single-plane integrated TDD 64T MMIMO, mid-band 8T, and low-frequency 4T. It is reported that since the release of the first generation of products in 2019, Huawei has maintained a leading position in this field. In a sense, some people call it the "full Netcom" in the field of base stations.

All-scenario, wide-band to improve wireless network performance

For global telecom operators, spectrum is the most important basic resource, and in the process of improving 5G performance and energy efficiency, how to maximize spectrum efficiency is particularly important.

The industry's lightest true broadband 4T4R RRU product launched by Huawei can simultaneously support the minimalist deployment of 700MHz-900MHz and 1.8GHz-2.6G/1.4GHz multi-band networks, perfectly responding to the actual situation faced by Chinese telecom operators. Frequency band and full-standard dynamic power sharing improves experience by 30% and reduces power consumption by 30%. At present, the product has been commercialized in Finland. After the equipment is transformed and upgraded to 5G, the energy consumption is reduced by 11% and the network capacity is increased by 8.5 times.

Huawei also launched the industry's first high-power ultra-wideband 8T8R, which weighs only 25Kg. Through the integration of 1.8GHz and 2.1GHz dual-band, it covers the aligned Sub1G frequency band, and the capacity of 4G network can be increased by 1.6 times. After evolution to 5G, the capacity can be increased by 3 times. , combined with the high-efficiency Hertz platform 8T8R native antenna, to further help customers reduce energy consumption by 15%, this is also the industry's only green antenna using the straight-through feed technology SDIF; for capacity scenarios, Huawei launched the industry's only large-scale commercial FDD Massive MIMO can increase the capacity of 4G network by 3 times compared to 4T. When upgraded to 5G, the capacity is increased by 5 times, realizing the benefits of both 4G and 5G.

For scenarios such as residential areas and urban hotspots, Huawei has also launched TDD and FDD dual-band EasyMacro? 3.0 and BookRRU? 3.0 series of minimalist solutions to help operators achieve 5G rapid blindness and heat recovery. For the ultimate indoor experience, the industry's only distributed M-MIMO can increase network capacity by 4 times compared to 4T4R and improve user experience by more than 30%, creating a 5G indoor ubiquitous gigabit experience to meet indoor requirements such as railway stations and shopping malls. scene requirements.