UK connectivity provider Cobham Wireless has announced the China Mobile Research Institute is using its massive MIMO test solution.

While massive MIMO is already a thing with more advanced flavours of 4G (4.5G and decimals thereafter), China Mobile has apparently brought in this set of Cobham kit to help out with its 5G testing. It’s all about testing the performance of multiple parallel signals which, despite the fact that we’ve been looking at it for a while, is still something that needs a fair bit of work to get the hang of.

“Cobham Wireless has an excellent understanding of the requirements of validating 5G Massive MIMO performance and has the ability to innovate and unlock the bottleneck of the industry,” said Dr Guangyi Liu, CTO of the Wireless Department at the China Mobile Research Institute. “This experience will be very important to China Mobile as the company moves towards 5G. It is the excellent partner to ensure the network complies with the new 3GPP 5G specification, whilst validating performance capabilities for Massive MIMO.”

“Cobham Wireless’ test solution is implemented on a software-based validation platform, which can easily adjust to new standards, positioning the operator at the forefront of 5G innovation as its network evolves,” Dr Li-Ke Huang, 5G Research and Technology Director at Cobham Wireless. “We are excited to be working with China Mobile as it sets new benchmarks in the development of 5G.”

Cobham reckons its 5G MIMO is special because it’s more scalable than most of the stuff that has been used previously. It’s intriguing to see Cobham continue to score this kind of gig after it sold its testing unit to Viavi a month ago. It has been trying to refocus its strategy for a while and this is presumably not a bad time to be in the wireless testing game, so it seems sensible to retain an interest in that area.

UPDATE – 18:00, 8 March.

It should be noted that the Viavi deal has not yet completed and thus the companies continue to operate separately.