ZTE Corporation has explored on how 5G mmWave is unlocking the full potential of 5G on March 2 at GSMA’s 5G mmWave Summit during MWC Barcelona 2022.
At the summit, ZTE’s Senior Solution Architect, Mr. Shen Yang, has introduced the key applications and early adopter markets of 5G mmWave in a speech titled “Key experience & exploration in mmWave application."
The upsurge of mmWave deployment is gradually coming. It’s estimated that up to now, 192 operators in more than 48 countries have invested in mmWave. Besides, the rich spectrum of mmWave brings greater bandwidth and broader application prospects. The deployment of 5G low band has been widely carried out.
However, the development of mmWave is limited by its own characteristics, and the application scenarios are still being explored step by step.
According to Shen Yang, ZTE has explored four major application scenarios of FWA, Back-haul, ToB and ToC scenarios, based on its leading 5G deployment experience and in-depth technical research.
Through innovative network sharing, ZTE has realized the FWA network commercial launch of Fastweb in Italy. In the Backhaul scenario, the company has effectively expanded the application scenario of mmWave, leveraging the advantage of large bandwidth of mmWave. Besides, combining the large bandwidth of uplink with 1D3U frame structure, ZTE has boosted the development of ToB industry significantly. The company has also continued to explore the in-depth application of outdoor hotspot and indoor large-capacity in ToC scenario while conducting extensive technical verifications.
“Technological innovation is the driving force for the development of mmWave, which can effectively improve the inherent shortcomings of mmWave,” said Shen Yang, "ZTE continues to increase R&D investment, and has made a range of achievements in mmWave technology innovations.”
ZTE flexibly adjusts the frame structure according to business requirements, system load, service perception, spectrum efficiency and other dimensions to achieve the optimal solution for business scenarios. The company deploys mmWave flexibly in different NSA and SA architectures and especially, the performance of SA NR-DC test is excellent, which lays a good foundation for the commercial use of mmWave NR-DC. In addition, to solve the problem of mmWave coverage, ZTE has created the industry-leading reconfigurable intelligent metasurface prototype product based on mmWave, which has achieved remarkable results in controllable beam serving weak field coverage and in improving coverage capacity and system performance.
5G mmWave boasts the technical advantages of rich spectrum resources, great bandwidth and easy combination with beamforming, which can fully release the full potential of 5G, according to Shen Yang.
“It is one of the core enabling technologies in high speed access, industrial automation and virtual reality. With rich business scenarios, the demand for communication capacity will be more diversified. Also mmWave can be flexibly adapted to the air interface. Relying on the advantages of rich spectrum resources, it will better meet the diversified and differentiated communication business needs.” added Shen Yang.
Moving forward, ZTE will continue its investment in R&D in the mmWave field, and keep working with global operators and partners to build and explore a new mmWave ecosystem.