Samsung claims 4.3Gbps 5G speed breakthrough

Samsung Electronics claims to have achieved the industry’s fastest 5G speeds in a lab demonstration that combined 800MHz of mmWave spectrum with MU-MIMO (multi-user, multiple-input, multiple-output) technology.

Using two test mobile devices running on a Samsung 5G mmWave access unit and using carrier aggregation and MU-MIMO to achieve the high throughput, the demonstration achieved about 4.3Gbps speeds on each mobile unit, reaching an industry peak speed of 8.5Gbps across both.

In February 2020, working with US comms provider Verizon along with Motorola Mobility and Qualcomm Technologies, Samsung demonstrated 5G peak speeds of 4.2Gbps on a live 5G network. The trial, which used a commercial network cell site in Texas, aggregated 800MHz of 28GHz band spectrum using Samsung Network’s 5G new radio (NR) 28GHz access unit, which has been commercially deployed by Verizon.

It said the demonstration highlighted the key difference of 5G – its use of mmWave spectrum, the wide bandwidth of which enables mobile operators to provide multi-gigabit speeds that lower band spectrums cannot match. With multi-gigabit speeds, said Samsung, users can experience transformational 5G mobile services from mobile operators that can potentially deliver new and rich services, such as 8K video streaming, augmented reality remote learning and holistic virtual reality teleconferencing, plus new use cases that are being worked on.

A number of countries, including Japan, South Korea and the US, have already assigned 5G mmWave spectrum, and two of them have launched commercial 5G services using the spectrum. More than 15 nations are expected to join the 5G mmWave club in coming years.

“Samsung will continue to be at the forefront in advancing 5G mmWave technology,” said Hyunho Park, senior vice-president, networks business at Samsung Electronics. “This successful demonstration proves mmWave’s potential to deliver new kinds of business use cases and open up opportunities for mobile operators. We look forward to building on this significant technical breakthrough to fuel our continued journey towards an innovative and vibrant mmWave ecosystem.”

Samsung’s Networks division has been one of the first to successfully create and deploy 5G end-to-end solutions ranging from chipset, radio and core network to cloud platform for both mid-band (2.5GHz/3.5GHz) and mmWave (28GHz/39GHz) frequencies. It supports commercial 5G services in markets such as Korea and the US, currently two of the largest deployments in 5G market-ready subscriber countries.

It is now also actively supporting the commercial deployment of 5G in Japan and is expanding its global 5G market footprint rapidly to new markets including Canada and New Zealand.