Following Vodafone’s announcement this week of a successful Massive MIMO trial, Optus has announced what it claims is a world first pairing of Multiple Input Multiple Output and 3CC Carrier Aggregation technologies — 3CC Massive MIMO — in a live trial.
While the Vodafone trial achieved a speed of 717 Mbps, the Optus trial, which was also conducted with technology partner Huawei on live traffic at Macquarie Park in June 2017, attained a speed of 818 Mbps.
Both Massive MIMO and multiple Carrier Aggregation technologies are considered key to enabling 5G technologies.
Optus claims to be the first in the world to complete a successful combined live network implementation of the massive MIMO and 3CC CA technologies together in the same equipment.
{loadposition stan}Dennis Wong, managing director of Optus Networks, said, “Earlier this year, Optus launched a 4.5G network and completed Australia’s first field trial of Massive MIMO technology.
“We’re committed to leading Australia in terms of 5G development and testing, and this recently completed world-first 3CC Massive MIMO test is further testament to our commitment and developments we have been able to achieve in this space.
According to Optus, site capacity during the live testing was significantly improved by almost four times compared to that of legacy 4T4R MIMO base stations.
Massive MIMO is expected to be a key technology in 5G through the use of intelligent spatial diversity and 3D beam-forming features, allowing a theoretical improved spectral efficiency up to 6 times that of a traditional antenna system.
The Massive MIMO Integrated Antenna system used in the live site was supplied by Huawei and capable to deliver 64T64R MIMO, supporting up to 80MHz of all four carriers of Optus’ 2300MHz TDD band.
To complete the trial, Optus used Huawei’s Massive MIMO AAU solution which has 16 beam-forming streams in a 128T128R configuration.
“We’re seeing a 75% year on year increase in data consumption. Massive MIMO is an important step along the journey to 5G as it allows us to immediately increase cell site capacity and spectrum efficiency," Wong added.
Optus plans to roll out Massive MIMO sites in selected capital cities starting from the end of 2017.
The company says its customers will be able to directly benefit from Massive MIMO, especially in high data traffic areas, and should expect improved download speeds in congested areas.