Ericsson and SoftBank have announced the next step of their 5G trial to 28GHz, after successfully completing the 4.5GHz and 15GHz spectrum on basic 5G trials in Tokyo.
Started in August 2016, the comprehensive 5G run included base stations and user equipment with control signal feedback using mid-band spectrum at 4.5 GHz, which is now one of the future candidate bands for 5G services in Japan.
The upcoming 5G tests will be conducted both in indoor and outdoor trial environments covering both device mobility and stationary tests, utilising Ericsson’s mmWave 28GHz 5G Test Bed solution which includes base stations and device prototypes. The trial will showcase advanced 5G technologies including Massive-MIMO, Massive Beamforming, Distributed MIMO, Multi-user MIMO and Beam Tracking together with multi-gigabit data rates and ultra-low latency which are becoming key requirements for future consumer mobile broadband and industrial use-cases.
Hideyuki Tsukuda, senior vice president at SoftBank, said: “SoftBank started to verify 4.5GHz radio back in August 2016 and now 4.5GHz is becoming the leading candidate band for 5G services in Japan together with 28GHz. We are leveraging Ericsson’s Test Bed with 28GHz radio to validate a lot of advanced features at super low-latency and high throughput, which helps position us as a pioneer of 5G.”
Picture credit: Ericsson
