Japanese operator carried out the 5G trial with equipment provided by NEC
Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo announced that it has achieved a 28 GHz wireless data transmission between a 5G base station and a 5G mobile station in field trials using a car moving at 305 km/h, or about 189 mph.
DoCoMo said the 5G trial was carried out in partnership with NEC Corporation and NTT.
The trials also achieved a 1.1 Gbps ultra-high-speed data transmission via downlink to a 5G mobile station moving at 293 km/h and a fast handover during communication between 5G base stations and a 5G mobile station moving at 290 km/h. In addition, the trial also achieved a wireless live relay of 4K high-frame-rate video via uplink from a 5G mobile station moving at 200 km/h.
The trials took place in April 2018 at the Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI) using 700 megahertz of spectrum.
NTT DoComo said it will continue conducting 5G research with leading vendors and partners to expand 5G capabilities in a wide range of operating environments. NEC was in charge of the provision of 5G mobile station equipment and 5G base stations. The Japanese company also set up the 5G core equipment. NTT, through two of its laboratories, was in charge of the analysis of radio propagation in high-frequency band and the construction of 4K high-frame-rate video-transmission system. Sony Business Solutions provided a 4K camera for high-frame-rate video.
NTT DoCoMo has been carrying out a number of 5G trials, mainly with Chinese vendor Huawei. The two companies recently announced a collaboration with Tobu Railway to trial a 5G millimeter wave system at Tokyo Skytree Town as part of a broader push for 5G field trials being advocated by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC).
The partners said the trial was conducted with the main aim of researching technical conditions to use the 28 GHz band and other candidate spectrum for 5G in dense urban areas.
NTT DoCoMo and Huawei previously completed a joint field trial for 5G mobile communications over a long distance using the 39 GHz mmWave band in Yokohama, Japan. During that trial, the downlink data transmission achieved a maximum speed of more than 2 Gbps on a testing vehicle, which was equipped with user equipment equivalent to a mobile phone.
In November 2016, NTT DoCoMo and Huawei 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.
Also, Finnish vendor Nokia recently secured a contract with NTT DoCoMo to provide 5G equipment for the operator’s future commercial launch.
