China Mobile and ZTE announced they have completed the deployment and pre-test verification of Pre5G Massive MIMO technology 3D-MIMO in Jiaxing, a prefectural city in northern Zhejiang province in China.
The testing, conducted in collaboration with China Mobile Zhejiang and the China Mobile Jiaxing Branch, included verification tests in scenarios including large-traffic scenarios in universities or 3D in-depth coverage in high-rise residential buildings.
It builds on the completion of the world's first 3D-MIMO field verification conducted by the two companies in 2015.
The 3D-MIMO technology increases downlink capacity by 3-5 times and uplink capacity by 4-6 times over traditional 4G networks, helping to address issues caused by the exponential growth in demand for traffic and growing 4G user base in dense areas such as universities.
Using three carriers on a 3D-MIMO site downlink rates reached 1Gbps while uplink rates reached a peak of 237Mbps.
Testing showed that 3D-MIMO increased uplink and downlink spectrum efficiency of small-packet services by 2-3 times on average compared to co-frequency eight-transmit macro base stations. The test involved up to 800 concurrent commercial users.
The 3D beamforming technology also helped to suppress interference, enhance connections on cell edges and increases user traffic in the coverage area.
Last year, China Mobile and ZTE completed 3D-MIMO pre-commercial verification in 29 provinces and 50 cities as part of their collaboration on the technology.