Ericsson and SoftBank announced the next stage of joint 5G technology trials as part of a program launched in August last year, when the partners tested 5G technology including base stations and end user equipment with control signal feedback using mid-band spectrum at 4.5 GHz, which is one of the candidate bands for delivery of 5G services in Japan.
Following the completion of basic 5G trials conducted in Tokyo in 2016 using 4.5 GHz and 15 GHz spectrum, the two companies now plan to proceed with more advanced tests.
The next 5G trial will be conducted in both indoor and outdoor trial environments and will encompass device mobility and stationary testing. The trial will specifically utilise Ericsson's mmWave 28 GHz 5G test bed solution, which includes base stations and device prototypes, and will feature advanced 5G technologies including massive-MIMO, massive beamforming, distributed MIMO, multi-user MIMO and beam tracking.
The latest technology trials are designed to deliver both the multi-gigabit data rates and ultra-low latency that are expected to be key requirements for future consumer mobile broadband and industrial use-cases.
Ericsson announced last July that it was extending its longstanding partnership with SoftBank and would hold joint field trials of 5G technology in Tokyo. Under the agreement, the two companies planned to cooperate to build a common understanding of 5G use cases and deployment scenarios, evaluate potential 5G technology components in field trials, and collaborate on 5G research projects.
In November 2016, Ericsson announced it had completed the first commercial implementation of its Elastic RAN for SoftBank's in Japan. Part of the Ericsson Cloud RAN solution, Elastic RAN is designed to improve users' mobile broadband experience through dynamic coordination of users and cells. Ericsson stated that installation of the technology in a Tokyo train station showed that downlink throughput could be increased by up to 40% during peak hours for commuters with 3 carrier aggregation-enabled smartphones.
In February this year, SoftBank announced it had deployed Ericsson's virtual Mobility Management Entity (MME), Cloud Execution Environment (CEE) based on OpenStack and Cloud Manager for Orchestration (ECM) into its commercial network. The deployment implemented a complete network functions virtualisation (NFV) solution, including virtual network functions (VNF), NFV Infrastructure (NFVI), VNF Manager (VNFM) and VNF Orchestration (VNFO).
The Ericsson virtual MME operates on commercial off-the-shelf hardware and is designed to coexist with native Ericsson MME to extend the resource pool.
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