Huawei’s “5G UL & DL Decoupling” Receives 2019 GSMA Award for Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough

[Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2019] At MWC 2019, the GSMA presented Huawei Technologies with 2019 Award for Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough for its “5G Uplink and Downlink Decoupling” technology. This award is one of the highest honors recognized by GSMA in recognition of the technical innovation that brings significant improvement in user experience.

"It is a great honor for Huawei to win this award. How to improve the coverage at the early stage of 5G deployment is a common problem for the industry. To promote industry development, to improve consumer experience, and to help carriers better deploy network and services, is the driving force behind Huawei's continuous innovation in wireless technologies, especially 5G technologies." Mr. Zhou Yuefeng, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Huawei Wireless Solution, said when he received the award.

As the frequency of C-band is higher than existing systems, using the existing 4G spectrum of Sub-3G to carry 5G NR uplink services becomes a natural option, though it is difficult. The uplink and downlink decoupling technology dynamically allocates spectrum resources at the TTI level to minimize the impact on LTE performance by less than 10%. Moreover, it is greatly improving the uplink and downlink coverage in C band, improving the cell edge rate, and significantly enhancing user experience. This effectively implements the network construction target of 4G/5G co-site co-coverage and reduces the cost of integrated network construction. This technology is widely used to ensure that 5G networks in C-band do not significantly increase the number of sites, shorten the deployment period, and enable more users to enjoy 5G services earlier.

Mr. Zhou Yuefeng, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Huawei Wireless Solution receiving the award

To cope with the challenge of accelerating MBB network traffic growth, especially uplink throughput requirements, Huawei continuously invests in technological innovation and cooperates with many leading operators to verify the effects uplink and downlink decoupling technology. According to the test results of China Mobile in Shanghai and Hangzhou, the peak rate of a single user reaches 2.6Gbps and the average rate of the entire network reaches 1.1Gbps when the carrier bandwidth is 100 MHz. After the uplink and downlink decoupling solution is implemented, 1.8GHz improves the indoor experience rate of 5G by 2-3 times compared with that of 3.5GHz, and increases the depth of by 5-6 times.

With its excellent performance and technological innovation, Huawei has won more than 30 5G commercial contracts worldwide and shipped over 40,000 5G base stations.

MWC 2019 runs from February 25 to February 28 in Barcelona, Spain. Huawei showcases its products and solutions at booth 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1, booth 3I30 in Hall 3, the Innovation City zone in Hall 4, booth 7C21 and 7C31 in Hall 7. For more information, please visit carrier.huawei.com/en/events/mwc2019