Evolution to 5G: Pakistan CMPak, Huawei Deploy Microwave MIMO link

Pakistan CMPak and Huawei has recently completed a joint innovation. Based on the latest microwave technology of 5G, CMPak successfully achieved the industry's longest distance microwave MIMO link innovation test which reached 11km with 5Gbps capacity, this is the first commercial use of 5G microwave MIMO solution for large-scale commercial use in Pakistan.

This technology innovates to solve the problem of bandwidth upgrade under limited spectrum resources and can be flexibly expanded to double capacity, 5G microwave MIMO solution provide a new and mature solution for the network evolution towards to 5G.

As a leading and innovative carrier in Pakistan, CMPak faces the problem of how to greatly improve the microwave transmission bandwidth under limited frequency resources. Based on that, Huawei proposes the 5G microwave MIMO solution which can improve the microwave spectrum efficiency by 100% to double the capacity, shorten the installation distance (Rayleigh distance) by 67%, and reduce the requirement of MIMO deployment of tower space. These benefits promote the large-scale commercial use of the 5G microwave MIMO technology.

Using 5G microwave CA (Carrier Aggregation) technology, which can aggregate 4 carriers into one hardware, the innovative solution combining MIMO and CA is proposed to increase the capacity by 8 times with the same hardware as the traditional 2x2 MIMO solution. In this way, smooth capacity expansion can be achieved without climbing towers and the delivery cost is reduced to 33% of the traditional solution with greatly tower space save.

Generally, the microwave MIMO technology is applied to the distance less than 7km, but the innovation test reached 11.03km which is the longest microwave MIMO link in the industry. Using innovation algorithm, the 5G microwave MIMO link can stably provide 3.5Gbps capacity and reach maximum 5Gbps with 2* 56 MHz channel spacing which is known as the longest microwave and largest MIMO link in the industry. In the future, hundreds of MIMO links will be deployed in a large scale in CMPak. This is the first commercial use of the microwave MIMO solution in the industry.

The success Innovative of MIMO and CA is of great significance to operators with limited spectrum resources, which means that operators do not need to wait for more spectrum resources and can further improve the evolution of the 5G technology. Perry Yang, the president of the microwave product line, Huawei, said: "Creating value for customers with innovative technologies is the survival reason for Huawei microwave. Huawei microwave is looking forward to joint innovation with more operators to contribute to network development."