Make the most of Massive MIMO

Learn how FDD Massive MIMO changes the game

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Massive MIMO

The 5G era has brought more deployments, booming data traffic and subscriber growth. Networks require new levels of spectral efficiency to meet the user and capacity demands now required. Mid-band is the sweet spot between coverage and capacity: Massive MIMO technology offers communications service providers the larger bandwidth of the mid-band to deliver powerful 5G experiences in a cost and energy efficient way.

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Coverage comparison between legacy antenna and Massive MIMO.

Massive MIMO explained

Massive MIMO more effectively exploits the spatial domain to improve the coverage, capacity and user throughput of mobile networks. This is achieved by harnessing multi-antenna technologies like beamforming, null forming and multiplexing. The results include a better user experience, higher network capacity, and an ability to support long-term traffic growth that would not be possible with conventional solutions using remote radio units.

Multi-antenna technologies have existed for several decades, and by the time of the 4G/LTE era were being deployed in a range of commercial uses, with techniques even used in everyday Wi-Fi routers.

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems use multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver along with software to coordinate signal paths and ultimately increase throughput. The resulting gains were a significant breakthrough, but the 5G era demands far more in terms of throughput and capacity. Enter, Massive MIMO.

The evolution to Massive MIMO

Massive MIMO dramatically expands upon the scale and capabilities of MIMO, and has been an intrinsic component of networks since the start of 5G. Buildout began in dense urban areas where initial demand was highest, before continuing in areas with lower population density. There is now a significant uptake globally.

The hardware component of Massive MIMO is a compact antenna array with a massive number of antenna elements and a large number of radio transmitter and receiver chains (more than eight transmitters and eight receivers). Along with baseband functionalities, these are tightly integrated in a unit capable of creating multiple steerable and shapeable beams. This is paired with software deploying sophisticated algorithms to maximize coverage, capacity and peak rates.

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How to build high-performing Massive MIMO systems

In this video and blog post, Ericsson’s experts look inside Massive MIMO systems and explore how they are built, detailing the groundbreaking radio technology that enables advanced 3D beamforming.

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A combinations of three fundamental multi-antenna techniques are harnessed in Massive MIMO to increase performance: beamforming, null forming and spatial multiplexing. These techniques can be applied to both downlink and uplink, and work either as main tools for achieving desired performance, or as further performance boosters.

Beamforming

Beamforming is a key technique which increases signal quality by spatially focusing power, amplifying transmitted and received signals in some directions more than others. A common goal with this technique is to achieve a high beamforming gain in the direction of a device of interest, improving link quality in terms of signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio (SINR). Improving link quality ultimately contributes to improved network coverage, increased capacity, and better user throughput.

Spatial multiplexing (MIMO)

Spatial multiplexing is when several data streams are multiplexed on the same time-frequency symbol. These layers can either be sent to the same device, called single-user MIMO, or split to different devices, known as multi-user MIMO. In both of its forms this technique can improve spectral efficiency, with resulting benefits in user throughput and network capacity.

Single-user MIMO

Single-user MIMO is a central component of Massive MIMO. Here, increased throughput is achieved by transmitting multiple data streams from an array to a single user. High signal levels are a prerequisite for the best results here, and advanced beamforming techniques help create these conditions to be exploited by single-user MIMO.

Multi-user MIMO

In multi-user MIMO, multiple layers are transmitted to different users across the same frequency resource, increasing network capacity. This technique improves performance at high traffic loads. In order for this to function however, the system needs to find two or more users that need to transmit or receive data at the same time.

Null forming

A performance booster for beamforming that lowers the beam gain in certain directions or reduces it entirely. By intentionally designing the beam shape to have nulls or lower gain in the directions of user equipment that is not the desired target, signal interference can be reduced.

Broad beamforming technology in 5G Massive MIMO

This paper explores Ericsson’s innovative dual-polarized beamforming technique. This broad beamforming technology designs radiation patterns to match almost any cell shape of interest, creating broad beams which maximize power utilization.

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Interference Sensing Massive MIMO innovations

The 5G era has raised expectations of what connectivity can deliver, translating to a widespread demand for reliability, low latency, and strong user throughput underpinning an enormous list of use cases. From day-to-day activities like gaming, to societally critical services, IoT and autonomous vehicle technology: users now expect networks to deliver without interruption, whether they're in the middle of the city or un a remote location. The entire telecom ecosystem needs to evolve to fulfill these expectations, and Massive MIMO is a vital component.

Traffic growth

Ericsson Mobility Report forecasts show that global mobile data traffic is expected to grow by a factor of around 3 by 2030 . If the uptake of data-intensive services like XR is quicker than expected, then data traffic could even surpass this.

To maintain high service quality while also meeting this demand therefore, network capacity must increase. Conventional radios alone will soon not be able to balance this equation in many deployment scenarios – Massive MIMO is necessary for performance.

Urban density

Over half of the global population lives in urban environments. Today these areas are characterized by a high volume of mobile network users spread both horizontally and vertically, with high-rise buildings creating a physical challenge for data transfer.

The advanced beamforming capabilities of Massive MIMO excels in these scenarios thanks to the ability to send both vertical and horizontal beams towards users. This facilitates significant downlink capacity gains compared to conventional non beamformed systems.

Rural connectivity

Connectivity is equally important outside of cities. For rural deployments where the distance between sites is greater, the dilemma networks face is how they achieve coverage while still maintaining TCO and energy efficiency.

Here, Massive MIMO’s ability to produce higher beamforming gain and a better signal to interference ratio is beneficial. The increased spectral efficiency compared to conventional systems meanwhile can improve the performance of existing sites, helping to reduce costs and contributing to energy efficiency.

Network energy efficiency

A combination of increasing utilities costs as well as stricter sustainability goals means the hunger for greater connectivity must be met while also achieving maximum energy efficiency.
Ericsson’s Massive MIMO solutions have capabilities that help strike this balance, in particular Massive MIMO Sleep. This dynamically powers down radio components during periods of low traffic load to reduce power consumption even in the most congested of areas.

Massive MIMO handbook

A guide for:

How to use Massive MIMO to meet 5G performance requirements
How to choose suitable products in typical network deployment scenarios
Deeper understanding of Massive MIMO, covering architecture, implementation and radio requirements
Detailed insights on antennas, wave propagation, antenna arrays, multi-antenna technologies, 3GPP solutions, network performance, and Massive MIMO features

Read the handbook

Massive MIMO product lineup

Our broad Massive MIMO portfolio spans Ultralight TDD, Wide-band TDD and Multi-band TDD and FDD options – all powered by the processing capabilities of Ericsson Silicon.

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FDD Massive MIMO success with Verizon and Telstra

Mobile networks have consistently evolved to keep up with demand. But today, the game has changed. It’s no longer just about delivering faster downloads. The rise of uplink-heavy applications has flipped the script. This is the moment for a new approach.

Learn why FDD Massive MIMO changes the game, including customer success stories with Verizon and Telstra.

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Massive MIMO for 5G networks

Massive MIMO has become the preferred option for large-scale deployments in 5G mobile networks. They enable powerful tools for improving capacity & coverage.

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