ZTE and China Mobile put 3D-MIMO through its paces in Jiaxing

ZTE and China Mobile have announced the completion of commercial deployment and multi-scenario test verification of 3D multiple input multiple output (3D-MIMO) technology in Jiaxing.

China Mobile and ZTE jointly completed what was billed as the world’s first 3D-MIMO field verification in 2015. Since December 2016, the two companies have deployed 3D-MIMO base stations using ZTE’s “Pre5G” massive MIMO solution in Jiaxing and conducted verification tests in various scenarios, such as large-traffic scenarios in universities and in-depth coverage in high-rise residential buildings.

In the university scenario – which features high-traffic and high-interference challenges – implementation of three carriers on the 3D-MIMO site in Jiaxing maximized usage of existing spectrum usage and enabled a downlink field rate of up to 1 Gbps, while the uplink achieved peak rate of 237 Mbps.

By sharing the traffic of super-busy cells, the 3D-MIMO site reduces the resource occupancy of 8T macro-station cells and improves the service throughput in the coverage area.

Also, said ZTE, test results of the Jiaxing 3D-MIMO site showed that compared to co-frequency 8T macro stations with the same coverage, the uplink and downlink spectrum efficiency of small-packet services (such as web page browsing and WeChat) is increased by 2–3 times on average, and the spectrum efficiency of large-packet services (for example, file download) is even higher. Up to 800 commercial users were in the cell during the test. By using 3D beamforming technology and targeting users accurately, the base station also effectively suppresses interference.

Meanwhile, the results of previously completed verification in high-rise scenarios shows that the 3D-MIMO base station provides vertical large-angle 3D coverage, with both the uplink and downlink rate gains of indoor weak and remote coverage points reaching 2–3 times over 8T macro stations on the same site. For the weak points in the cell edge, the gains are even greater. This indicates that in-depth coverage performance of 3D-MIMO is suitable for vertical coverage of high-rise buildings, ZTE said.