World’s first 5G NR radio in Telecom

By 2021, we forecast that 7.7 billion mobile broadband subscriptions and 1.5 billion cellular IoT devices will depend on mobile networks worldwide. Leading operators - who want to be frontrunners in the networked society - are already planning their 5G networks to meet these needs.

In order to support growing demand from both people and things and the ever increasing traffic volumes, mobile operators are continuously striving to improve the capacity, quality and functionality that their networks. The road to next generation mobile networks, 5G, means operators want to continue to invest in the LTE technology that will be foundational to their 5G networks and business.

5G will encompass an evolution of today's 4G networks and the addition of a new, globally standardized radio access technology known as NR, which stands for New Radio.

First 5G NR radio, featuring massive MIMO and MU-MIMO

We are now introducing the industry’s first 5G NR-capable radio, called Ericsson AIR 6468. It features 64 transmit and 64 receive antennas enabling it to support our 5G plug-ins for both Massive MIMO and Multi-User MIMO.

The high-performance beamforming, required for Massive MIMO, is enabled through the use of a split Cloud RAN architecture, which brings the required intelligence and scalability to this new radio. And, the AIR 6468 is designed for compatibility with the 5G NR standard while also supporting LTE.

Gigabit LTE and Cloud RAN

We have also added new LTE software and hardware products that leverage key 5G technology concepts that operators can deploy in today’s networks to improve both performance and efficiency while preparing for 5G, including: 

• First 5G NR radio for massive MIMO
• Wideband radio with instant power sharing
• Three new radios supporting Gigabit speeds for LTE
• Small outdoor micro radio for unlicensed spectrum
• Baseband variants for densification, PIM mitigation and Elastic RAN
• Powerful spectrum analyzer software
• Streamlined network deployment and delivery platform