Nokia and Telefónica Deutschland announced that have completed building their joint "Early 5G Innovation Cluster" in Berlin.
The "Early 5G Innovation Cluster" incorporates five sites in Telefónica's cellular network in Berlin-Friedrichshain. These sites, equipped with Nokia 5G Airscale radio and Wavence Microwave technology, will be used in the next months primarily to test and measure the performance and coverage of first 5G services in a dense urban area.
The enhanced Microwave technology tested in the innovation cluster is playing a key role as transport technology providing backhaul for dense 4.5G, 4.9G and 5G networks. Microwave backhaul (connecting a radio cell via radio to the network) is typically used to link small cells to fiber access points. Nokia Wavence microwave supports multi Gigabit throughput and Carrier SDN (Software Defined Networking), providing a higher degree of automation in the network.
Before being deployed in Telefónica's live network, all equipment was tested successfully end-to-end in the company's laboratory in Munich. Nokia's Wavence microwave solution showed data rates of 2 Gbit/s with Dual Band technology at 18 und 80 GHz, which can be software-upgraded to 10 Gbit/s. The tests also included Carrier Aggregation on the Nokia AirScale radio access technology. By using more than one carrier frequency, data throughput can be significantly enhanced. The "Early 5G Innovation Cluster" will utilize five carrier aggregation for download and two carrier aggregation for upload to achieve high throughput rates.
Cayetano Carbajo Martin, CTO, Telefonica Deutschland
With our joint Innovation Cluster in Berlin we push the further development of 5G forward together. Nokia's portfolio will enable testing the newest technology to keep moving forward fast with 5G in our network.
Detlev Otto, Customer Team Head for Telefonica Deutschland, Nokia
The insights we will gain from this cluster, located in a dense urban environment, are going to help both companies in preparing for 5G roll-outs and developing new services for Telefónica's subscribers.
