T-Mobile and Ericsson just teamed up on a 16-layer multi-user multi-input multi-output (MU-MIMO) demonstration, showcasing peak cell throughput of more than 5.6 Gbps. That’s on one channel of 2.5 GHz spectrum.
During the test, engineers connected eight separate smartphones to the same 5G radio and resources and, thanks to MU-MIMO — a fancy term for reusing the same radio resources for many users in the same cell at the same time — and beamforming — focusing a wireless connection in a specific direction — were able to achieve more than 700 Mbps on each device.
Using a commercially available massive MIMO radio with 64 antennas from Ericsson and the OnePlus 8 5G smartphones T-Mobile sells today, 16 unique streams of data were transmitted — each stream capable of hitting more than 350 Mbps. And with two data streams for each device, that’s 700+ Mbps for each smartphone, all using the same radio resources at the same time.
In simple terms, the test is significant because the technology will allow T-Mobile to bring blazing fast 5G speeds to more customers. In tech terms, with 100 MHz of total 5G spectrum in the demonstration, T-Mobile was able to achieve an astonishing 50+ bps/Hz in spectral efficiency. That is much higher than the single digit efficiency typically experienced today. T-Mobile expects to begin deploying this technology next year as they continue the goal of building America’s best 5G network.
Neville Ray, President of Technology at T-Mobile
This is what you get when you pair T-Mobile’s unmatched spectrum portfolio with the best damn team in wireless — innovation that changes the game for the entire industry.
