With the industry's massive mobile show right around the corner, Huawei is giving sneak previews of what it has in store: and it's all about 5G. Ahead of Mobile World Congress, it has announced it will unveil a full series of "5G-ready" scenario-based Massive MIMO AAU (multiple input multiple output active antenna units) products to help operators prepare for 5G based on their 4G network cores.
The Chinese company says these new AAUs provide several times better user experience compared with common 4G construction technologies, as well as better meeting the requirements of prospective mobile Internet services. Specifically, Huawei is talking up its Dual 200 MM AAU that operates on the C-band for large capacity deployment in urban areas with a peak rate of 10 Gbit/s per cell; its dual-band MM AAU for co-deployment of C-band and other bands; and the MM AAU EasyBlink designed for pole sites.
Massive MIMO is the defining air interface technology of 5G, providing the ultra-large user capacities and high speeds promised with the next-generation network. Huawei says it's nearly 100 times more complex compared to 4G air interfaces, but that wireless artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can dramatically simplify the networks and enhance efficiency, as well as improve the network's coverage.
In Huawei's lab tests of its AAU products, the network capacity was four to five times higher than that of the live network. The company expects to begin large-scale commercial deployments on FDD spectrum in 2018 through to 2019.
Huawei talked up the importance of automation and AI in 5G at the same pre-MWC press conference in London where it announced its MIMO plans. Ryan Ding, Huawei's executive director and president of the carrier business group, told attendees that the vendor is developing a "smart network solution which could realize predictive maintenance and enable carriers to launch new online businesses within seconds."
Forbes reports that Huawei will include AI in its device chipsets and believes it needs to also be baked into the cloud backend and data pipe -- essentially into the network core and all the services that run on it.
Huawei is investing CNY5 billion ($800 million) in R&D for 5G in 2018 alone to support its suite of commercial 5G network equipment. It will launch more than 20 new products and discuss work with its more than 300 partners at the upcoming MWC confab in Barcelona. Stay tuned...
— Sarah Thomas, Contributing Editor, Telco Transformation