Huawei and China Mobile have announced the first deployment of the vendor's TD-LTE 8T8R Active Antenna Unit (AAU).
China Mobile has deployed the new version of the AAU in Hebei province as part of its extensive TD-LTE rollout.
Huawei said the upgraded AAU has improved cell edge download rate by 55% in recent field tests. AAUs integrate the antenna and remote radio unit in a single box.
China Mobile had already deployed 10,000 Huwaei 4T4R AAU units in 2013. After the new version was released, the operator adopted the 8T8R version for Hebei province, and plans a large-scale deployment shortly.
The announcement adds that Huawei has supplied FDD LTE AAU products to around 10 countries, including Singapore, the UK, Germany and Russia.
In a separate announcement, Nokia Networks said its TD-LTE deployment for China Mobile in the city of Fuzhou has been evaluated as delivering the best performance in the country during the operator's quality assessment of its commercial TD-LTE network to date.
The test was based on performance metrics including network coverage, interference level and voice and data quality.
Nokia Networks currently supplies TD-LTE technology to 18 of China Mobile's 31 operating provinces.
Fuzhou was the first city in which China Mobile went live with its TD-LTE network.