China Unicom Beijing and Huawei First to Commercialize 64T64R MetaAAU for Better In-depth Coverage in Residential Areas
[Beijing, China, August 17, 2022] China Unicom Beijing spearheaded the commercialization of Huawei's brand-new 64T64R MetaAAU in a pilot urban residential area in Tongzhou District, which is home to a large number of 5G users who have a huge demand for 5G services. The rollout of 64T64R MetaAAU resulted in a significant increase in user-perceived rates. Even at a building near the cell edge, the downlink user-perceived rate was able to reach 100 Mbps on every floor. This breakthrough technology transcends the longstanding challenges facing deep residential area coverage to further develop ubiquitous gigabit high-quality 5G networks.
Testing the uplink and downlink rates of the MetaAAU in Beijing's high buildings
64T64R MetaAAU is an upgrade of the Huawei MetaAAU series that adopts extremely large antenna array (ELAA) technology for optimal performance and energy efficiency. The number of channels has grown from 32T32R to 64T64R, meaning this brand-new green 5G base station Massive MIMO product can deliver strong coverage, large capacity, and outstanding experience.
Since the commercialization of 5G, China Unicom Beijing has built gigabit 5G networks in urban areas for continuous coverage by deploying Massive MIMO products based on the 3.5 GHz large bandwidth. In the first half of this year, China Unicom Beijing also extended gigabit 5G networks in multiple villages. However, the limited uplink coverage and small coverage radius of mid and high bands pose challenges for network construction in scenarios requiring strong coverage, such as densely populated urban areas. MetaAAU boosts coverage and is the ideal option for China Unicom Beijing for delivering enhanced coverage and gigabit 5G experience both indoor and outdoor through wall penetrating signals.
Fan Liqun, head of China Unicom Beijing's 5G co-construction and sharing work team, said, "In the first half of this year, we deployed 32T32R MetaAAUs at over 1,000 sites to cement our digital village strategy. This time, we deployed Huawei's brand-new 64T64R MetaAAUs in a residential area, and we were amazed at how well it is performing on the live network. We look forward to widely deploying this product in the future to provide our users with better 5G experience in more scenarios."
"Since the MetaAAU was launched, we have worked with China Unicom Beijing to commercialize it in different scenarios on the live network." said Ritchie Peng, President of Huawei 5G Product Line. "I am delighted to see the excellent performance of MetaAAU on the live network in residential areas. We will continue to work with China Unicom Beijing to test this product in more scenarios and fully unleash the power of Massive MIMO for operators."