They say three heads are better than one. Now, it appears, that is true with antennas. In a test conducted in Samsung’s lab, based in Suwon, Korea, three transmit (3Tx) antennas were used to achieve a peak upload throughput rate of 363 Mbps.
“With demands on mobile networks rising, enhancing upload performance is essential to improving consumer and enterprise connectivity, as well as application experiences,” said Will Townsend, VP & Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “Samsung and MediaTek have achieved an important 5G Standalone milestone in a demonstration which underscores a tangible network benefit and does so in a way that can help operators maximize efficiency.”
Samsung Electronics and MediaTek combined 5G Standalone Uplink 2CC Carrier Aggregation with a C-band UL MIMO, which improves upload speeds to meet the demand brought on by the rise of live streaming, multi-player gaming and video conferences. The MediaTek test device featuring its new M80-based CPE chipset began with one uplink channel apiece at 1,900 MHz and 3.7 GHz, but added an extra uplink flow using MIMO on 3.7 GHz.
“There are two innovations being used at the same time here,” said Joe Madden, Principal Analyst, Mobile-Experts. “User devices generally use a single antenna for transmissions and up to four antennas for 4×4 MIMO in the downlink. This demo used two antennas for uplink in one band, and a separate third antenna in another band, giving the benefits of MIMO to a portion of the uplink. This demo also uses carrier aggregation of 1900 MHz and 3.7 GHz bands, essentially using two “pipes” to carry more data in the uplink.”
“This kind of uplink transmission will be supported in iPhones and premium-tier Samsung phones during the next year, so the demo is a good step that illustrates the value of adding the components to the phone or CPE,” he added.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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