ZTE and the Hunan branch of China Telecom have launched China’s first commercial 5G Standalone site to support Massive MIMO 1+X SSB (synchronization signal and PBCH block), with three-dimensional coverage. This combination of technologies will improve coverage and capacity, especially at the cell edge, in the 3.5 GHz spectrum, and that has a positive effect on network costs, says the vendor. In particular, this technology will help with ‘vertical coverage’ for high buildings in dense cities.
The 5G 1+X SSB solution introduced by ZTE supports wide beams with power boosting (1) to provide better basic coverage than the traditional seven-beam MIMO configurations. X; and on-demand configuration (X), to improve vertical and 3D coverage.
The 5G 1+X SSB site was built for a 29-storey office building in Zhuzhou, using one horizontal wide beam and three vertical beams. Compared with the traditional seven-beam sites, the 5G 1+X SSB site addressed more than 90% of problems with weak indoor penetration, said the companies, while increasing the in-depth coverage rate to over 20%, and the overall coverage rate to over 40%.
ZTE says the solution also boosted the data rate in the areas of weak coverage by almost 50%. On the top floor, which had the weakest signal reception, a stable downlink rate of over 100Mbps was achieved. Power consumption was reduced by between 5% and 10% during low traffic periods, with dynamic power adjustment.