The 5G trial used a 4.5 GHz system developed with Huawei
Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo announced the completion of what it claims to be the world’s first outdoor trial of 5G mobile technologies for ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) using a 4.5 GHz system developed in collaboration with Chinese vendor Huawei.
The Japanese telco said the 5G trial simulated a realistic environment involving a stationary mobile terminal that received signals at distances of 0.8 to 1 km from the base station.
DoCoMo said the trial achieved an over-the-air latency of less than 1ms with a packet transmission success rate of more than 99.999% –both prerequisites for URLLC under 3GPP and ITU-R standards.
Similarly, ultra-reliable low-latency communications were also achieved at distances of approximately 0.3 km to 0.6 km from the base station, when the mobile terminal was moving at approximately 25 km/h.
The telco said that these results paves the way for the commercial launch of 5G communications networks in 2020.
“A combination of several key technologies underpinned the success of the trial, in which the high reliability and low latency requirements of URLLC were achieved in a wide-area testing environment. The first is technology to always retransmit radio signals irrespective of the terminal’s radio conditions, ensuring high reliability of transmissions,” the telco said in a statement. “Antenna diversity technology was also used to ensure the high-quality reception of signals. Finally, a new radio frame structure incorporating extremely short transmission time slots was employed to reduce over-the-air latency.”
NTT DoCoMo said it will continue to collaborate with vendors in its research and development of advanced 5G communications technologies.
In November 2016, Huawei and NTT DoCoMo carried out a large-scale field trial using 200 megahertz of spectrum in the 4.5 GHz band in Yokohama, Japan. During the trial, the companies said they witnessed network speeds up to 11.29 Gbps total and less than half-a-millisecond latency. Earlier this year, the telco kicked off a 5G trial in Japan’s capital Tokyo.
In related news, DoCoMo also announced it has teamed up with Sony to conduct a joint trial involving real-time transition of HD video over 5G to Sony’s experimental “New Concept Cart” high-tech vehicle.
