A trio of companies, namely China Mobile (CMCC), Intel and Huawei have recently completed 5G interoperability and development testing using the latest 3GPP Release 15 Standard.
Within that wall of jargon is a rather great piece of news.
5G tech is still in development and while 3GPP has specifications for 5G, there’s no guarantee that the tech from separate companies will work together. If companies are working according to the standard it should work but, anything can happen.
While in development it’s okay for Huawei tech to be able to work with Huawei tech, but in the real world Huawei tech might have to work with Ericsson tech.
So China Mobile, Huawei and Intel conducted full protocol, full channel and full procedure tests using 3GPP’s latest standard with hardware from different vendors and it worked.
“5G network and 5G terminals from different vendors can not only perform functional tests, but also can further implement 5G service tests, support various enhanced Mobile Broadband services such as ultra-high-definition video and VR. This is a key step to end-to-end 5G commercialize [sic] system,” said Huawei in a press release.
The tests were conducted at the China Mobile Research Institute based on the largest C-band bandwidth allowed by the 5G New Radio standard with a 64T64R Massive MIMO configuration integrated in the base station test setup and an Intel 2T4R terminal.
From the sounds this is a “best case” scenario but that having been said, Huawei reports the data transfer rate with this configuration would be as high as 1.5Gbps. That’s fast enough to support 8K video streaming.
China Mobile says that the success of this interoperability testing means more terminals can be used for China Mobile’s 5G scale test. The firm also said it will launch pre-commercial 5G terminals in 2019.
Huawei’s president of 5G, Yang Chaobin emphasised the importance of this testing for the commercial application of 5G tech.
“3GPP 5G NR based interoperability testing will further promote the commercial process of 5G. Huawei will actively work with operators and industry partners to promote the maturity of China’s 5G industry and help operators to obtain 5G business success,” Chaobin.
Interoperability and development testing has happened before with Intel taking part in three of the bigger tests including this most recent one.
It’s expected that deployment of 5G tech will begin in 2020 and with that deadline less than two years away, tests such as these really do help push the process along.
[Source – Huawei] [Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
