The Mobile World Congress (MWC) was held in Barcelona last week. Several major telecom companies took the opportunity to showcase and describe their pre-5G solutions based on Massive MIMO technology.

Huawei and Optus carried out an infield trial on February 26, where a sum rate of 655 Mbit/s was obtained over a 20 MHz channel by spatial multiplexing of 16 users. This corresponds to 33 bit/s/Hz or 2 bit/s/Hz/user, which are typical spectral efficiencies to expect from Massive MIMO. The base station was equipped with 128 antenna ports, but the press release provides no details on whether uplink or downlink transmission was considered.

ZTE demonstrated their TDD Massive MIMO solution, which we have described earlier on the blog. The company claimed to set a new record for single-site peak sum rate at their MWC demonstration. Spatial multiplexing of 16 data streams was considered with 256-QAM and the sum rate was 2.1 Gbit/s. Further details are found in their press release.

Nokia and Sprint demonstrated TDD-based Massive MIMO technology for LTE networks, using 64 antenna ports at the base station. Spatial multiplexing of eight commercial LTE terminals was considered. Communication theory predicts that the sum rate should grow proportionally to the number of terminals, which is consistent with the 8x improvement in uplink rates and 5x improvement in downlink rates that were reported. Further details are found in their press release or in the following video:

Ericsson and Sprint are also planning Massive MIMO tests in LTE TDD in the second half of 2017, according to another press release.

Did we miss any Massive MIMO related announcement from MWC? Please tell us in the comment field below!