Entel Peru and Huawei verify TDD ultra-large cell capacity to drive home broadband development

May 15, 2020 - LIMA, PERU: Entel, a leading telecom operator in Peru, and Huawei jointly completed the TDD ultra-large cell capacity verification on commercial 4G networks. 40 outdoor CPEs using Huawei's latest technology accessed a 20 MHz Massive MIMO cell. The cell throughput exceeded 1.5 Gbps, more than twice the industry's average of 700 Mbps, which will provide effective support for operators to rapidly develop mobile Internet and wireless broadband access services.

Entel Peru's collaboration with Huawei on scaled TDD Massive MIMO rollout began in 2018, primarily aimed at expanding wireless home broadband. Since then, the operator has seen a significant increase in both 4G user numbers and revenue. This has motivated the operator to use WTTx as an essential strategy for growing its user base, with the overall goal of extending home broadband to one million households in three years.

As new services, including mobile Internet and video, develop rapidly, mobile traffic is expected to grow sharply. This highlights the pressing urgency for network construction and upgrades to meet the rising challenges of enormous capacity demand.

Through this collaboration with Entel Peru, Huawei will provide an innovative solution featuring unique coordination between Massive MIMO and outdoor 8R CPEs. The CPE product uses HiSilicon chips, supporting SRS 4-antenna selection that enables precise channel information feedback. It will be the industry's first Gigabit CAT19 CPE product that has been commercially deployed on a large scale.

Huawei's Massive MIMO base station has achieved an innovative algorithm breakthrough for WTTx, significantly improving cell spectral efficiency. Based on network-device coordination, beamforming performance improves substantially, particularly in terms of the number of paired UEs for multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO). This enables the same time-frequency resources to be allocated to more UEs, thereby significantly improving downlink capacity.

The test was conducted on live networks, with results from it meeting expectations and demonstrating the huge capacity of TDD ultra-large cells based on Huawei's network-device coordination solution.

Gonzalo Veas, CTO, Entel Peru

Gonzalo Veas, CTO of Entel Peru, said: "Our long-term partnership with Huawei has enabled continuous improvement in our network quality. This joint verification has achieved strong results. In future, we will continue to enhance collaboration with Huawei to accelerate the application of innovative technologies and build more efficient mobile networks."

Zhao Dong, President of Huawei's TDD Product Domain, said: "We are glad to join Entel Peru to conclude the world's first innovative pilot project of TDD ultra-large cell capacity on live networks. The project is based on our unique network-device coordination solution. We will continue to innovate on technologies and provide high-quality, highly reliable, and sustainable mobile solutions to Entel Peru to help it achieve greater business."