NEC today announced it has developed a prototype of A4-sized massive-element Active Antenna System (AAS) for 5G small cell base stations. The low-SHF band-compatible AAS combines the antenna and RF components through the use of a newly developed high-density printed circuit board and an IC that integrates the high radio frequency circuit with the digital circuit, achieving the practical compact size.
The new AAS has achieved fully-digitized operation of antenna beam control and MIMO precoding. This improves the precision of beam forming and achieves high spectral efficiency even when a user distribution is lopsided within a cell or under conditions where there are frequent user movements within a cell, thus contributing to the provision of high-capacity communications. When used in conjunction with NEC’s spatial multiplexing technologies, the AAS can achieve more than ten times greater per-cell throughput compared with conventional LTE base station.
