Japan’s NTT DOCOMO and Taiwan-based MediaTek have completed a trial of groundbreaking wireless connectivity technology, the companies have announced.
The trial combined DOCOMO’s non-orthogonal multiple access, or NOMA, chipset with Mediatek’s multi-user interference cancellation (MUIC) technology in three mobile devices the size of a smartphone. With each device in a different location, a base station transmitted data to all of them using a single frequency, which varied in signal transmission power for each device. The NOMA technology allowed for all of the devices to access the data, while MediaTek’s MUIC technology ensured that interference was cancelled out, so that each device only got the data intended for it.
It’s a big deal because it illustrates how 5G technology can ramp up data transmission, with DOCOMO and MediaTek asserting that their combined solution can increase spectral efficiency for mobile devices up to 2.3 times beyond that of LTE connectivity.
News of the trial comes after DOCOMO first signaled its intention to test out 5G technology through a partnership with Ericsson announced late last year, and soon after a newly published Ericsson survey pointed to a global telecom industry racing to develop and implement such technologies. DOCOMO says that it will continue to collaborate with partners on 5G R&D, and plans to launch 5G products and services starting in 2020.
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