Huawei has released its new 5G microwave solution with “1+2” simplified architecture ahead of AfricaCom 2019 which will be held in Cape Town from 12-14 November.
The ICT company will showcase the solution to Africa’s telecoms at the continent’s biggest ICT trade showcase.
This space-saving solution allows for more efficiency in the use of space on cell towers, decreasing antennas that are mounted on them.
Huawei Simplified “1+2” 5G Microwave Architecture
This microwave solution is the first of its kind in the industry. With 1 dual-band antenna, plus 2 any band (6-86GHz) RF unit, the simplified architecture allows 5G microwave for providing up to 20+Gbps bandwidth capacity for all backhaul scenarios at the same time.
David Chen, Director of Marketing & Solution Sales for Huawei Southern Africa Region says “This solution can decrease tower space by 50%, which can be directly translated to engineering cost saving for operators. This solution is future-oriented, since it provides fibre-like capacity in the air, allowing for a smooth evolution to 5G”.
Microwave is the mainstream solution for mobile broadband backhaul in Africa, with more than 70% of wireless stations using microwave backhaul. With the increase of transmission capacity required by LTE/4G and 5G, microwave backhaul capacity will need to grow accordingly. Therefore traditional microwave will face challenges such as insufficient tower space and spectrum, difficultly to upgrade and high cost of tower climbing.
Operators usually need more than one frequency band to accommodate the traffic, which means the additional antenna is required on the tower. This usually causes congestion on cell towers.
With Huawei’s “1+2” 5G Microwave architecture, one dual-band antenna can support any 2 frequency band running at 6-86GHz.
David Chen says with this solution, operators are able to fully explore cell towers to its maximum potential.
“Saving space on towers is saving TCO (total cost of operations),” said David Chen.
AfricaCom is Africa’s biggest telecoms and technology event which takes place annually in Cape Town, South Africa. This year, during this 3-day event Huawei will showcase its end-to-end 5G ability, facilitating the industry’s digital transformation by innovative tools, platforms and solutions and explore with partners new opportunities emerged with new technologies.
