At the 2017 Global Mobile Broadband Forum in London, Huawei, the global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, released a new generation of 5G-oriented base station featuring three highlights: “extreme simplicity”, “extreme speed”, and “extreme evolution”. The base station is designed for network deployment in multi-band, multi-RAT, and multi-service scenarios in the future.

This base station features a new generation of high-capacity BBU5900, multi-band RRU, large-bandwidth and high-power C-band Massive MIMO AAU, and high-power cabinets. The extreme simplicity of the base station refers to its multi-mode/multi-band/multi-antenna, TCO saving, and investment protection. Extreme speed user experience refers to the base station’s large bandwidth and high power. While the extreme evolution denotes maximising reuse of existing equipment for 5G.

Digging deeper into the specifications of the “three extremes” Huawei uses to describe the base station: the extreme simplicity base station has an antenna “1 + 1”, with one multi-band antenna or AAU covering Sub2.6G and the other covering Massive MIMO; RF “2 in 1”. A single RF module supports high-power 4T4R on both 1.8 and 2.1GHz bands; BBU baseband box “6 in 1”, with 6 modes (GSM, UMTS, LTE FDD, LTE TDD, NB-IoT, 5G NR) in 1 box.

The extreme speed user experience points to the transmission capacity of the new BBU as it can reach 50Gbps, to meet the co-site deployment requirements of multiple bands, multiple modes, and large-bandwidth Massive MIMO. A series of multi-antenna RF modules support 4T4R, 8T8R, and 64T64R, to guarantee the ultra-speed service experience in the 5G era.

Extreme evolution points out the newer-type, higher-power cabinet that will work with the new BBU to accommodate larger-capacity baseband and control boards in the future and support evolution towards 5G, which helps operators invest in the present while taking into account the future and maximising the value of their existing equipment.

Jiang Xiangzhong, president of Huawei’s SingleRAN Domain, said: “Adhering to the idea of SingleRAN, Huawei Wireless innovates continuously and establishes a unified and efficient platform to build a multi-band multi-RAT convergence network. This new type of base station will become the golden base station in the 5G era. It is another exciting presentation of the idea of SingleRAN in the 4.5G/5G era. It can help operators quickly and economically deploy a highly competitive network in the 4.5G/5G era.”

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