Ericsson and Japan's SoftBank have announced plans to demonstrate 5G over 28-GHz millimetre wave spectrum, as part of the next stage of their joint 5G trials.
The companies said they are moving forward with more advanced 5G tests following the successful completion of basic 4.5-GHz and 15-GHz 5G trials in Tokyo last year.
The upcoming trial will involve both indoor and outdoor testing environments and cover both device mobility and stationary tests. The trial will use Ericsson's mmWave 28-GHz 5G Test Bed base station and device prototype solution.
SoftBank and Ericsson will make use of advanced 5G technologies including Massive-MIMO, massive beamforming, Distributed MIMO, Multi-user MIMO and beam tracking.
“SoftBank started to verify 4.5-GHz radio back in August 2016 and now 4.5GHz is becoming the leading candidate band for 5G services in Japan together with 28-GHz,” the operator's SVP Hideyuki Tsukuda said.
“We are leveraging Ericsson's Test Bed with 28-GHz radio to validate a lot of advanced features at super low-latency and high throughput, which helps position us as a pioneer of 5G.”
Ericsson Japan head Mikael Eriksson added that he is confident that the company “will be the first to deliver 5G services and that we will deliver the best performing end to end network in Japan.”