Sprint demos 8 times increase in cell capacity with massive MIMO tech

Telecom operator Sprint will demonstrate how massive MIMO technology can boost cell capacity by eight times compared to 4G LTE at Nokia’s booth.

Sprint is the first U.S. operator to demonstrate massive MIMO for TDD-LTE spectrum with 64T64R, for both the downlink and uplink on an existing LTE frequency. Massive MIMO, a key element of 5G, can enable LTE network performance well beyond 1Gbps.

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Nokia said its AirScale massive MIMO Adaptive Antenna is part of the company’s 4.9G technology, which provides significant increases in capacity, lower latency and several Gigabits of speed-per-second on the path to 5G.

The AirScale massive MIMO Adaptive Antenna is driving capacity for megacity deployments and service continuity with 5G. Sprint uses 3D Beamforming software to deliver throughput gains of up to eightfold uplink and fivefold downlink. Sprint will use 8 commercially available devices operating on Sprint’s 2.5 GHz TDD-LTE band 41 spectrum.
Massive MIMO antennas, attached to a base station, focus the transmission and reception of signal energy into small regions of space. This provides new levels of spectral efficiency and throughput, and allows data consumption from more users in a dense area without requiring more radio spectrum or causing interference.

“Massive MIMO is a critical part of our strategy to increase the capacity of our LTE Plus network today, and in the future, it will be a key element of our 5G network,” said Gunther Ottendorfer, chief operating officer of Technology at Sprint.