Ericsson has announced that it is commercializing the world's first 5G NR(New Radio) for massive MIMO, codenamed AIR 6468, with the first deployments coming in 2017. 5G NR is defined by 3GPP as a new OFDM-based wireless standard that will become the foundation for the next generation mobile networks.
Together with the Ericsson 5G Plug-Ins introduced in June and Ericsson's already commercially available Radio System Baseband 5216, which currently powers Ericsson's Radio Test Bed, Ericsson claims to be the first to deliver all components of a 5G access network.
AIR 6468 combines advanced antennas with a large number of steerable ports to enable 5G technologies of beamforming, Massive MIMO and - building on that - Multi-user MIMO, initialized as MU-MIMO. These capabilities improve user experience while enhancing the capacity and coverage of the network and reducing interference, said Ericsson. The new radio provides LTE support as well, so it is applicable in today's networks.
Arun Bansal, Head of Business Unit Network Products, Ericsson
Ericsson has driven innovation in every generation of mobile technology and now we are set to over-deliver on an aggressive promise. We are introducing the new hardware that 5G Plug-Ins, announced in June, will run on, so that the first operators can start to deploy 5G infrastructure.
Daniel Staub, Head of Joint Mobile Group, Swisscom
On the road to 5G, we will continue to invest in LTE advancements that will become part of our 5G networks. For us, it is key that Ericsson has chosen to focus on advances that will support us in this evolution.
