The World's First FDD NR 40MHz (2.1GHz) Innovative Solution Launched in Shenzhen
[Shenzhen, China, August 12, 2020] Huawei and Shenzhen Telecom took the lead in realizing the world's first pilot of FDD NR 40MHz innovative solution. By leveraging the coverage advantage of FDD 2100MHz frequency band, FDD NR maximizes spectrum efficiency, and further realizes the collaborative networking of 5G TDD and FDD.
Shenzhen Telecom TDD+FDD collaborative networking site adopted C-Band and 2.1GHz FDD NR@40MHz.
The performance test of the pilot was based on FDD 2.1GHz, 40MHz frequency band and 4T4R 5G RRU. In SA networking mode, tested with 2T4R CPE N5368X, the upstream peak rate reached 479Mbps and downstream rate reached 901Mbps.
The new trend of 5G network construction is from large-scale deployment of TDD to multi-frequency cooperative deployment of TDD+FDD. FDD network is based on balanced upstream and downstream frequency bands, so upstream coverage and experience will not be limited. In addition, FDD will provide better capability for in-depth indoor coverage. Furthermore, TDD+FDD collaborative deployment will promote continuous and extreme experience and build industrial application capabilities through carrier aggregation and super uplink technologies.
In 3GPP R16 standard, FDD NR 40MHz large bandwidth cell is defined, which further improves user experience and spectrum utilization. FDD NR has obvious advantages over FDD LTE in terms of user experience and coverage.
With 40MHz spectrum resource, the average downlink rate of FDD NR is about two times that of LTE. If the LTE terminal does not support 2.1GHz 2CC CA, the downlink rate of NR is four times that of LTE. NR adopts f-OFDM, and the protection bands on both sides of the frequency band are smaller, so that more resource blocks (RB) are available for the same bandwidth. NR protocol has lower overhead and CRS free without CRS interference. To sum up, FDD NR has better downlink experience. Compared with LTE, FDD NR uplink peak rate gain is over 200%. FDD NR terminals can support uplink of 2T in mid-frequency band, while LTE terminals only support uplink of 1T, so FDD NR has more prominent uplink capability.
In terms of coverage, FDD NR SSB coverage is better than LTE with gain of 4-5dB. FDD NR SSB can achieve narrow beam, so the beam energy is more concentrated and the coverage is better than LTE CRS wide beam.
The smart phones commercially available in 2020 already supported mainstream FDD NR bands, including 2.1GHz. This builds the foundation for the rapid commercial use of FDD NR in large.
