Mitsubishi Electric and NTT DOCOMO announced today that they have achieved what they believe to be the world’s first (as of today) fifth-generation (5G) mobile telecommunications proof of concept for 27Gbps and 25Gbps maximum throughputs via one mobile terminal over communication distances of 10m and 100m, respectively, using the 28GHz radio frequency. The demonstration was conducted during joint outdoor field trials using 28GHz-band massive-element antenna systems and 16-beam spatial-multiplexing technology with 500MHz bandwidth.
Conventional 4G spatial multiplexing technology has limited multiplexing order, so Mitsubishi Electric and DOCOMO developed beamforming technology in an analog domain and inter-beam interference reduction technology to suitably separate overlapping beams with digital signal processing at the base station. The result is 16-beam spatial multiplexing, which has been unachievable with 4G. The developed beamforming technology enables beams to track a mobile terminal by switching the preset beam. The trial took place in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture Japan from September 10 to 28, 2018.

