Huawei announces breakthrough small cell Achievements in 4.5G/5G technologies

[Shanghai, China, July 14, 2015] Huawei today announced its achievements in realizing key 4.5G/5G technologies in all Small Cell products (including LampSite, Pico, Micro, and Book RRU) at the Mobile World Congress in Shanghai. These technologies help network operators speed up the delivery of Mobile Broadband (MBB) services at a Gbit/s-level bandwidth, moving further towards realizing the 4.5G/5G era. The company also demonstrated its 5G technologies on LampSite and Book RRU solutions made possible through joint efforts with China Mobile.

Announcing these innovations, Eric Xu, Huawei's Rotating and Acting CEO, said: "Network experience has become the primary productivity for all industries, especially for network operators."

Constantly improving the service experience has become a paramount concern for mobile operators who are facing mounting challenges in increasing network capacity in airports, railway stations, shopping malls, commercial blocks, and many other indoor and outdoor hotspots where 80% of data traffic is generated. For mobile operators it is now a matter of urgency to increase network capacity in these places, while at the same time they must contend with a constant decrease in their input-output ratio and declining revenues as bandwidth increases.

To address these challenges, the entire mobile communications industry is seeking pathways to alleviate the capacity bottleneck, satisfy subscriber demand, and find new areas for revenue growth. Small cells have now become the frontline for MBB innovations.

Huawei has made a series of significant breakthroughs in air interface solutions applicable to Small Cells, including 256QAM modulation, carrier aggregation, Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA), and candidate technologies for 5G, enabling networks to deliver a data rate at the xGbit/s level.

With these solutions, network gateways and core network elements are moved downstream, flattening the network architecture and shortening service delays to within 10ms. A further Huawei innovation - Service Anchor - allows networks to provide capability openness functions, enabling a variety of value-added services based on high-accuracy indoor positioning technology and allowing subscribers to experience a service experience equivalent to 4.5G and 5G networks.

Rapidly growing MBB networks are currently made possible at the cost of deploying a large number of Small Cells to densify cellular networks, creating serious inter-cell interference. To address this, Huawei has applied 5G technology to Small Cells, transforming cellular interference into channels for data exchange. This innovative solution makes it possible to significantly improve air interface efficiency without the need to add hardware to existing networks and enabling operators to build subscriber-oriented networks that can deliver a data rate approaching the limit of Shannon' s theorem.

A higher order of modulation allows for a higher spectral utilization and data rate over the air interface using the same frequency resources. This 256QAM modulation scheme allows a symbol to bear 8-bit data, as compared to the 6-bit load allowed by a 64QAM modulation scheme. Huawei has launched a series of indoor and outdoor Small Cell products supporting 256QAM modulation, increasing data transfer rate by over 30% without the requirement for additional bandwidth resources.

Licensed-assisted access (LAA) allows for use of unlicensed frequency resources to achieve carrier aggregation. Huawei's Small Cell products have realized LAA that allows for aggregation of 3 component carriers based on unlicensed frequencies. This allows operators to better employ unlicensed frequency resources to provide subscribers with more reliable MBB services. LAA has also laid a solid foundation for the evolution of unlicensed spectrum technologies like Wi-Fi.

In addition to breakthroughs in air interface technologies, Huawei has also introduced innovations in moving network controller nodes downstream. For example, Huawei's Small Cell product Service Anchor - an enterprise service gateway - supports local data transfer and local network control. With these key technologies, the end-to-end service delay can be reduced to within 10ms, making cloud computing, local virtual reality, local video broadcasting, and real-time control possible

The continuous advancement of mobile networks not only creates numerous opportunities for a better service experience using APPs on smart devices, but also creates explosive growth in capacity demands on mobile networks. To respond to this, Huawei uses Service Anchor in its Small Cell solutions thus allowing operators to provide value-added digital services while improving network coverage. For example, operators can cooperate with third-party partners to provide services like indoor navigation, passenger flow statistics, and pinpoint advertising and marketing. This solution provides operators with an opportunity to share in the enterprise market and uncover new areas of revenue growth. With "digital network architecture" and "digital services", operators are able to build an industry chain in a win-win strategy that spans different sectors, and accelerate their transformation from a traffic-centered business to an information-driven business.

"Small cells are spearheading the innovation of mobile network technologies," said Zhou Yuefeng, President of the Huawei Small Cell Product Line.

A first for the ICT industry, Huawei's Small Cells have incorporated technologies for 4.5G and 5G networks to increase the air-interface data rate to the Gbit/s level, shorten the end-to-end service delay to within 10ms, and provide a 5m or higher positioning accuracy. With these solutions, operators have the capacity to provide subscribers with a variety of value-added services and the best-ever MBB service experience.