The first FDD full-band 4x4 MIMO antenna will be released by TIM and Huawei jointly at 2018 Mobile World Congress. The antenna supports 4x4 MIMO on all of TIM’s sub-3 GHz frequency bands, leaving room also for one dedicated active antenna in C band and mmWave. This breakthrough innovation will help TIM to maximize site value also favouring site sharing, will enable diverse 5G applications and facilitate the deployment of 5G-oriented best-experience networks.
TIM’s radio access networks have evolved from voice-centric to data-driven networks and in the near future they will continue evolving from CS voice to PS voice (VoLTE) and from GUL to SingleRAN (GUL & NR), transforming network architectures to support agile service provisioning, mobile video services and network automation, entering a new era of intelligent networks. The FDD full-band 4x4 MIMO antenna helps TIM deploy the 5G-oriented SingleRAN antenna to cope with uncertainty of different network evolution paths, maximize the value of legacy sites, and lower investment risks.
The first product being developed on Huawei’s latest MUC platform, the antenna uses Huawei’s patented dense array and dipole reuse technologies to support 4x4 MIMO on all sub-3 GHz frequency bands in a single sector on a single antenna, including 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1400 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and 2600 MHz, while leaving room for one active antenna in C band and mmWave. Its compact size – a 6-array, side-by-side design, only 469 mm wide – and excellent wind load allow for a 15% increase in efficiency and rapid deployment of best-experience networks.
Giovanni Ferigo, Chief Technology Officer at TIM, comments: “TIM is dedicated to technological innovation for better network capacity and user experience. We worked together with Huawei to develop this FDD full-band 4x4 MIMO antenna, which helps us better address antenna deployment issues and paves the way for 5G.”
Mr. Joyee Zhang, President of Huawei Wireless Network Antenna Business Unit, says: “We propose a 1+1 antenna modernization concept, Ready for 5G. This concept uses one passive antenna for 4x4 MIMO on all sub-3 GHz frequency bands and one active antenna for C band and mmWave. The FDD full-band 4x4 MIMO antenna jointly developed with TIM will help TIM as well as other operators rapidly deploy 5G-oriented networks.”
Rome, 21 February 2018
