As LTE goes commercial and operators start to plan for LTE-Advanced, some players are inevitably pushing towards yet another generation of wireless performance. Huawei says it has run internal demonstrations of what it calls 'Beyond LTE', which can deliver more than 20 times the speeds of current 4G networks.
The Chinese vendor - which is seeking to position itself in the forefront of technology innovation, and is building major patent holdings in emerging standards - says the prototype system can reach peak data rates of up to 30Gbps. It achieves this using a combination of advanced techniques including antenna structure and MIMO arrays, plus changes to the RF architecture and intermediate frequency algorithms.
David Wang, president of the firm's wireless network business unit, said in a statement: "Mobile networks are developing at an unprecedented rate. Future technologies will bring revolutionary advances in network evolution - higher spectrum efficiency, wider spectrum aggregation, and faster access rates. Our Beyond LTE technology signifies the future of mobile broadband."
Huawei was keen to point to its growing power in standards-essential patents, and imply that some of its current breakthroughs would also find their way into future 3GPP specifications. According to the 3GPP, Huawei has had 265 core specs for LTE or LTE-Advanced approved over the past two years, 20% of the total approvals. That would give the Chinese giant the kind of influence over the next generation of 4G standards to which Ericsson and Qualcomm were accustomed in 3G.
