ZTE announced that it has supported China Unicom as the operator conducted its first 5G NR (New Radio) field test based on its pre-commercial 5G base station at sub 6 GHz and featuring massive MIMO, LDPC (low-density parity check) and other key 5G technologies.
During the trial China Unicom achieved data rates of up to 2 Gbit/s for single user-equipment. The 5G NR field test carried out in Shenzhen used the 3.5 GHz frequency band with a 100 MHz bandwidth, and was conducted by ZTE working with the Guangdong branch of China Unicom and the operator's network construction department and the China Unicom Network Technology Research Institute.
The field test was designed to verify the 5G technical performance and product commercial capabilities in a live network environment and builds on the established partnership for 5G network development between China Unicom and ZTE.
In 2016, China Unicom launched a 5G laboratory to verify the feasibility of potential key technologies and accelerate the development of 5G base station designs and platforms. Following the start of 5G field testing in 2017, China Unicom is expanding its efforts for verification, with a goal of achieving pre-commercial 5G network deployment in 2019 and a large-scale roll-out in 2020.
ZTE noted that earlier in 2017, it initiated the development of NOMA (non-orthogonal multiple access) technology at 3GPP, representing a core project for 5G NR. ZTE is also involved in China's national 5G tests, having completed testing in seven major scenarios, and was first to complete mMTC field tests in Phase 2 of the program.
In April this year, ZTE announced that it was implementing mobile edge computing (MEC) pilots and technical verification trials with China Unicom, China Telecom and China Mobile, ahead of plans to deploy the technology commercially in 2018. ZTE noted that it launched MEC pilots in collaboration with China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom during 2016.
