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Vodafone Turkey Trials 4.5G on 700 MHz TV Band and Massive MIMO on TDD Spectrum

Vodafone Turkey Trials 4.5G on 700 MHz TV Band and Massive MIMO on TDD Spectrum Vodafone Turkey CTO, Malik Rao (Image Credit: Vodafone)

Vodafone Turkey announced that it was the first operator to test the 700 MHz band, one of the most important spectrum bands for 5G technology, using the existing 4.5G network. 

Vodafone Turkey which has partnered with Huawei, used the 700 MHz band of the terrestrial television broadcast spectrum for the 4.5G demonstration.

The Operator has also completed a Massive MIMO testing recently during a EuroLeague Basketball match which is one of the most popular sporting events in Turkey.

Fans want to share pictures and videos  of the best plays, but with so many people in attendance it can be hard to get enough bandwidth.

To overcome this issue, Vodafone Turkey undertook the first commercial trial of 64 x 64 MIMO that was done using the 2600MHz Time Division Duplex (TDD)  spectrum band.

Massive MIMO technology, which is also set to become a key feature of 5G in future, provides higher capacity and throughput because is capable of doing ’full dimensional beamforming’, which means it can focus the mobile signal in beams that can be pointed horizontally and vertically to reach each customer.

Mallik Rao, Chief Technology Officer of Vodafone Turkey said, "During the live trial we installed one 2600MHz Massive MIMO TDD site in a corner inside the stadium. An increasing number of smartphones in Turkey are able to support TDD, which uses a single frequency band to send and receive communications.

The Massive MIMO site was installed on top of the existing legacy Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) macro cells. Smartphones supporting FDD require symetrical segments of spectrum to upload and download data"

He added that, "The live trial results were really promising and saw nearly a quarter of the total data demand during the event provided by the TDD Massive MIMO cell. The downlink throughput from the base station to the customer’s smartphone was improved by 13%,  meaning it was easier to download data during the match, said Vodafone in a statement. The Massive MIMO cell provided around four times better spectrum efficiency than an FDD cell during the event."

 
Author

Ray is a news editor at The Fast Mode, bringing with him more than 10 years of experience in the wireless industry.

For tips and feedback, email Ray at ray.sharma(at)thefastmode.com, or reach him on LinkedIn @raysharma10, Facebook @1RaySharma

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