Huawei, NTT DOCOMO achieve breakthrough in 5G mobility trial

Tokyo, Dec 18 : Chinese networking company Huawei and Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DOCOMO on Monday completed a successful field trial for 5G mobile communications over long distance with 39 GHz Millimeter Wave (mmWave) band.

The downlink data transmissions were achieved at a maximum speed of over 2 Gbps on a testing vehicle which was equipped with a user equipment (UE) equivalent to a mobile phone, while driving at speeds over 20 km per hour.

"Long-distance transmission over 39GHz mmWave will enable 5G network deployments in a large scale. It opens up the new stage of the 39GHz mmWave technology and will deliver ultra-fast experience with 5G data speed," Takehiro Nakamura, Vice President and Managing Director of 5G Laboratory at NTT DOCOMO, said in a statement.

The trial done in the commercial area of Yokohama opens up new doors for applications and deployments of 5G mmWave.

"The wireless industry will start using the new spectrum 100 times broader than current network to foster next wave of innovations," added Wen Tong, Huawei Fellow and CTO of Huawei Wireless Networks.

Achieving wide-area coverage and mobility performance on 5G mmWave is still a technological challenge for the 5G industry.

High propagation loss of mmWave signals limit its coverage, while the narrow directional beam required to focus the transmission power makes the mmWave beam to track the mobile device become more difficult.