Evolution to 5G: ZTE completes China's 5G mMTC field test

ZTE Corporation, a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, has completed the mMTC field test in the second phase of China's 5G test.

The test result showed that the number of connected terminals was increased by nearly 600 percent, reaching an equivalent density of 10 million connections. This indicates a major step forward towards the future Internet of Everything (IoE).

ZTE uses multi-user shared access (MUSA) technology to effectively enhance the number of connections, providing powerful support for scenarios involving massive connections with low power consumption.

By introducing short extended codes into the complex field, the MUSA technology proposed by ZTE is the industry's only multi-access solution allowing high overload and eliminating scheduling operations, increasing the number of connections by three-to-six times. The technology eliminates resource scheduling, and simplifies synchronisation and power control. In addition, the technology uses advanced spread spectrum sequence and SIC technology, simplifies terminal implementation, and reduces energy consumption.

As the world's largest regional 5G test project, China's 5G test entered its second phase - the technical solution verification phase - in 2017. The test location in Huairou, Beijing, where 5G NR@Sub-6GHz, 5G NR@mmWave, massive machine type communication (mMTC), and ultra-reliable low latency communications (uRLLC) test conditions are all available, meets all the test and research requirements prior to large-scale commercial use of 5G in the future.

The mMTC test is an important part of the second phase of China's 5G test. By using the patented frame structure design and MUSA technology, ZTE reached an industry-leading level, and staged a symbolic demonstration for promoting 5G technologies in the scenarios that require massive connections and low power consumption.

In the coming 5G era, massive connections and big data are destined to become key themes, and the Internet of Things (IoT) will become the main driving force for 5G development.

In the future, billions of mobile terminals with exceptional connectivity and computing power will be integrated with innovations in the fields of robots, artificial intelligence (AI), and autonomous cars, bringing a time of unprecedented change. mMTC is one of the three major application scenarios identified by the International Telecommunication Union Radio-communication Sector (ITU-R). It is one of the key performance indicators of 5G networks that a density of 1,000,000 connections per square kilometre should be reached. Massive connections pose a great challenge to 5G networks. In a traditional mobile network, if a large number of terminals initiate services, enormous scheduling resources and power are consumed. Solving these problems has become the primary prerequisite for supporting scenarios with massive connections.

As a core member of China's IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group, ZTE takes the initiative in undertaking a number of key technical research and product development tasks, and takes the lead in promoting the research and standardisation of a number of key 5G technologies. Following the completion of the tests in the first phase of China's 5G technology R&D test, ZTE is now fully engaged in the second-phase.

Using the latest IT baseband unit (BBU), 5G multi-band active antenna unit (AAU), and new radio (NR) air interface technologies, ZTE launched the field performance test to meet the key performance requirements in seven typical application scenarios, such as higher spectral efficiency, greater connection density, higher reliability, and lower delay of air interfaces.

This test further promotes the commercialisation of 5G products, and facilitates the technical solution verification prior to large-scale commercial use of 5G, laying a solid foundation for the commercial availability of 5G in China in 2020.