Huawei powered Asia's first TM9 commercial mobile network Enabling rapid growth of network capacity and evolution

[Hong Kong, China, February 24, 2018] Huawei teamed up with HKT to commercially deploy TM9 on its All Business Connected LTE network in Hong Kong and became the first mobile network in Asia Pacific to put LTE FDD TM9 into commercial use.

Following the commercial launch, Huawei will work with HKT on commercial testing of multiple-antenna technology based on TM9. This network evolution will enable the TM9 capability of latest mobile terminals, and lay a solid foundation for delivering better user experience through multiple-antenna networking technology paving way to 5G ready mobile network.

TM9 is a new transmission mode defined by 3GPP Release 10, and it represents an important breakthrough for the evolution of multiple-antenna technologies. By introducing new Reference Signal patterns, TM9 enables multiple-antenna technology evolution towards 8T8R or higher, while the existing network supports a maximum of four ports only. In addition, TM9 allows eNodeBs to form UE-specific beams for single user multiple-input multiple-output (SU-MIMO) or multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO), and to adjust beams based on changes in UE locations to significantly improve spectral efficiency.

With the 3GPP Release 14, 4-antenna TM9 phones, a 32T32R massive MIMO TM9 can achieve up to 6.5-fold capacity increase over a 2T2R cell, and the gains of massive MIMO or other multiple-antenna technologies will continue to increase as 3GPP specifications evolve.

Picture of multiple-antenna technology development in 3GPP specifications

With Joint Transmission (JT) capability between adjacent cells, TM9 can significantly improve the peak throughput of cell edge users, even on the commonly deployed 2T2R or 4T4R networks. TM9 can also be used together with TM7/8 in TD-LTE to further improve user experience in scenarios such as SU-MIMO or multi-carrier.

Mr. Peter Lam, Managing Director of HKT Engineering, said, "HKT is dedicated to continuously enhance network capability and quality using the latest network technologies to deliver superior mobile customer service experience. TM9 is the evolutionary trend, and it can significantly enhance network capacity and customer service experience in Hong Kong’s extremely high density environment. Furthermore, this technology also enables higher order multi-beam antenna realization, which is a critical component in our 5G ready network."

Mr. Veni Shone, President of Huawei LTE Product Line, said, "After years of evolution, the TM9 industry chain has matured. TM9 is now activated by default on some high-end mobile phones from mainstream manufacturers. All mainstream terminals newly released this year are expected to support TM9. We predict that the penetration rate of active TM9-capable terminals will reach 20% or even higher around the world by the end of 2018. Such terminal users will better enjoy the higher user perceived throughput achieved by multiple-antenna technology."