DOCOMO's Mobile Base Station Hits 10 Gbps Uplink

NTT DOCOMO and the Tokyo Institute of Technology achieved an uplink rate of approximately 10 Gbps during a field experiment.

In the experiment, a 400 MHz bandwidth in the 11 GHz spectrum was transmitted from a mobile station moving at approximately 9 km/h. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology was used to spatially multiplex different data streams using 8 transmitting antennas and 16 receiving antennas on the same frequency.

In light of the squeeze on remaining frequencies as mobile data traffic continues to increase, DOCOMO aims to achieve a transmission speed of more than 10 Gbps using super-high-frequency bands exceeding 5 GHz. Such high frequencies have been difficult to use for mobile networks due to the limited distances their waves are able to travel, especially along indirect paths such as around buildings.

NTT DOCOMO said the technologies also are applicable to downlink packet transmissions, suggesting that it should be possible to achieve a 10 Gbps downlink.