Huawei and NTT DoCoMo Break Boundaries with 5G Test, Achieving 11Gbps Speeds

It’s more than just Samsung venturing into the new frontier of 5G technology. The Chinese technology giant, Huawei, announced a significant milestone in their 5G test journey. In partnership with the Japanese telecommunications powerhouse, NTT DoCoMo, Huawei reported they successfully achieved a total user throughput of an astounding 11.29 Gbps and latency below 0.5 milliseconds in their 5G test.

The landmark test was conducted in Japan’s vibrant Yokohama Minato Mirai 21 District, utilizing the powerful 4.5GHz spectrum band. The test also employed new numerology and a frame structure complying with the latest 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) 5G New Radio current standards.

This isn’t a one-time success story for Huawei and DoCoMo. The companies embarked on this collaboration journey as early as December 2014. Subsequent to signing a MoU on partnership in 5G joint field trials, they achieved the world’s first large-scale outdoor field trial of Massive MIMO in Chengdu, China, in October 2015.

Currently, these two telecom giants are shifting their large-scale field trial to Japan, perpetuating the systematic verification of 5G key technologies. This includes evaluating Massive MIMO, ultra-reliability and low latency, mixed numerology using f-OFDM (filtered OFDM), and assessing the combined performance of SCMA (Sparse Code Multiple Access), Polar Code and f-OFDM.

Following the successful joint field trial, Mr. Takehiro Nakamura, Vice President and Managing Director of NTT DoCoMo’s 5G Laboratory said, “Our successful 5G large-scale field trial in the 4.5 GHz band has thrust the entire industry one significant step closer to achieving 5G commercialization by 2020. DOCOMO and Huawei have been expanding their collaboration on 5G from R&D initiatives to international spectrum harmonization for 5G since December 2014. Together with Huawei, we shall continue catalyzing 5G, both technically and from an ecosystem perspective.”

The noted less than 0.5 millisecond latency, which refers to the amount of delay in a data network over a communications channel, represents an improvement of around ten times over that of 4G networks. This delay can be affected by various factors ranging from channel properties to end-user equipment.

As the 3GPP is set to release radio specifications for 5G in July 2018, the Huawei’s test embodies one among the many progressive strides being made by telecom companies to prepare for the advent of the high-speed 5G experience.

In previous efforts, Huawei also revealed similar test initiatives with Optus, an Australian telecom company, hitting speeds of 35Gbps.

The promising 5G technology is expected to provide network speeds that are 10-100 times faster than our current average 4G LTE connections, potentially altering the landscape of digital communication as we know it.