Press Releases

February 27, 2017

Qualcomm, Ericsson, and NTT DOCOMO announce collaboration on 5G NR trials to accelerate wide-scale 5G deployments in Japan
—Trials will be compliant with the 5G NR 3GPP specification, the global 5G standard; driving the ecosystem towards rapid commercialization at scale—

  • Print

Products & Services

SAN DIEGO — February 27, 2017 — Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, Ericsson, and NTT DOCOMO today announced plans to conduct interoperability testing and over-the-air field trials in Japan based on the 5G New Radio (NR) specifications being developed by 3GPP. The trials will operate in mid-band spectrum at 4.5 GHz, as well as millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum at 28 GHz, showcasing the unified 5G NR design across diverse spectrum bands. The trials intend to drive the mobile ecosystem toward rapid validation and commercialization of 5G NR technologies at scale, enabling timely commercial network launches based on 3GPP Rel-15 standard compliant 5G NR infrastructure and devices.

In the trials, the Companies will showcase 5G NR technologies to efficiently achieve multi-gigabit per second data rates at significantly lower latency and better reliability than today's network, amongst other capabilities. These technologies will be critical to meeting the increasing connectivity requirements for emerging consumer mobile broadband experiences such as virtual reality, augmented reality and connected cloud computing, as well as enabling new high-reliability, low-latency services for use cases such as autonomous vehicles, drones and industrial equipment.

The trials will utilize device prototype and base station solutions from Qualcomm Technologies and Ericsson respectively, along with trial environments from NTT DOCOMO, to simulate real-world scenarios across a broad set of use cases and deployment scenarios. The trial will include 5G NR operation at 4.5 GHz, which allows a large bandwidth resulting in high data rates and good capacity with reasonable coverage to address the large number of envisioned 5G use cases. The trial will showcase advanced 3GPP 5G NR technologies including Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna technology, beamforming techniques, adaptive self-contained TDD, scalable OFDM-based waveforms to support wider bandwidths, advanced coding and modulation schemes, and a new flexible, low-latency slot structure based design. In addition, the trial will include 5G NR operation in mmWave spectrum at 28 GHz, employing advanced 5G NR antenna technology to deliver robust and sustained mobile broadband communications, including non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environments and device mobility.

"Over the last few months Qualcomm Technologies has announced several 5G NR trials with Ericsson and leading operators around the world, and we are very excited to extend that work in Japan with NTT DOCOMO," said Matt Grob, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "Trials based on the 3GPP 5G NR specification accelerate the path to commercial deployments."

"We are excited to conduct early 5G NR trials based on the 3GPP specification with Qualcomm Technologies and Ericsson," said Seizo Onoe, EVP and Chief Technology Officer, NTT DOCOMO. "NTT DOCOMO plans to deploy a 5G NR commercial system by 2020 and it is essential that the industry cooperate closely to create a 5G ecosystem in a timely manner. Through acceleration of the standardization and standard-compliant 5G NR trial activities, we will ensure the highly-stable 5G services."

"This important 5G standard-based trial collaboration will demonstrate the compliance to 3GPP and support an accelerated commercialization of the global 3GPP 5G specification," said Ulf Ewaldsson, senior vice president and chief technology officer, Ericsson. "Ericsson is working with leading operators and ecosystem players in 5G such as NTT DOCOMO and Qualcomm Technologies to enable global scale and to drive the industry in one direction."

The interoperability testing and trials, which will launch in Japan starting in the first half of 2018, are intended to track closely with, as well as help accelerate, the first 3GPP 5G NR specification that will be part of Release 15 — the global 5G standard that will make use of both sub-6 GHz and mmWave spectrum bands. Tracking the 3GPP specification is important because it promotes adherence and validation with the global 5G standard, accelerating the time to standard-compliant devices and infrastructure. It will also drive forward compatibility to future 3GPP 5G NR releases.

Go to top of the page