Companies state 5G trials to include interoperability testing and to be conducted in the second half of 2017.
Qualcomm, ZTE and China Mobile announced plans to conduct interoperability testing and over-the-air field trials based on the “5G New Radio” specifications being developed by the Third Generation Partnership Project. The trials are set to take place later this year.
The companies said the trials will tap spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band and be geared towards 3GPP Release 15 standards, which are expected to be the first step towards the next-generation technology. The trial will also make use of massive multiple-input/multiple-output antenna technology, adaptive self-contained time-division duplexing, beamforming techniques and scalable orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-based waveforms.
The trials will follow China Mobile’s 5G NR guidelines and utilize prototype devices from Qualcomm and base station solutions from ZTE to simulate real-world scenarios across a set of use cases and deployment scenarios.
“5G is very important for future development and we have put much resources on 5G research, standardization and industrialization, and built a 5G joint innovation center to cultivate the cross-industry innovation,” said Wang Xiaoyun, GM of China Mobile’s technology department. “We encourage more partners to work together, facilitate the completion of the global unified 5G standard, drive the industrialization and build a harmonized ecosystem through the trial, test and cross industry innovation.”
