KT announced on April 23 that it succeeded in outdoor demonstration of massive MIMO, or multiple-input multiple-output, which is the essence of 5G communications, for the first time in the world with Huawei at an LTE base station located in China.
KT engineers MIMO.jpg
MIMO can be defined as a way of boosting the capacity of a base station by simultaneously transmitting dozens of data channels by means of over 100 antenna devices. It is much more advantageous than LTE, in which only two to four antennas are used at the same time, in terms of data transmission speed and the number of mobile users that can be accommodated in the same coverage.
During the recent demonstration, 128 antennas, 16 data channels, and 3D beam forming were combined with each other to quintuple commercial LTE terminals’ capacity. KT is planning to check MIMO performance in wireless network environments in Korea in the second half of this year and accelerate the R&D for the purpose so as to provide the world’s first pilot 5G service in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
“We expect that the advent of 5G will be advanced based on the successful demonstration at this time,” KT explained, adding, “We are going to lead 5G technological standardization by working more closely with global manufacturers.”