ZTE claims multiple 5G testing performance records

As part of phase two of China’s national 5G tests ZTE has delivered some big numbers over a the full range of 5G use-case scenarios.

The 5G tests are organised by the IMT-2020 (5G) promotion group – China’s equivalent of 5G consortia found in most other developed economies. Phase two took place in Beijing, where ZTE got its hands dirty with a bunch of different 5G technological scenarios.

The test for eMBB (enhanced mobile broadband) in the 3.5 GHz band yielded a peak cell throughput of 19 Gbps for multiple users, which is apparently a new industry record. It was achieved using no less than 28 streams, which is a significant increase in the current industry standard of 16.

ZTE also used the 26 GHz frequency to achieve eMBB throughput of 13 Gbps to a single test terminal. This apparently raised the bar as defined by the ITU, which had previously stood at 10 Gbps.

The metrics for IoT network performance are a bit more arcane and convoluted. In what was described as a massive machine-type communications (mMTC) test ZTE’s efforts apparently realised the equivalent of 90 million connections per Megahertz, per hour, per square kilometre. This, we are told, is no less than 90x the current ITU standard, and was achieved using multi-user shared access technology.

The other main feature required of 5G will be ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (uRLLC) and ZTE was all over this too, it seems. In its test scenario, which used a unified test platform containing ZTE’s own silicon, a latency of 0.4 milliseconds was achieved, significantly lower than the ITU target of 1 ms.

Lastly ZTE grouped all three of the 5G core scenarios – eMBB, mMTC and uRLLC – into a unified test network that supported network slicing. Which is the mechanism by which a unified network can be configured to favour one of those scenarios. Apparently all of the aforementioned performance benchmarks were replicated in this unified scenario.