A new research facility, the ‘5G Development Centre’ has opened at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan, with backing from China Mobile, the world’s largest cellco by users. Light Reading writes that the research centre is looking at ways to ‘achieve 5G’s anticipated speeds of up to 800Gbps and thousand-fold increase in capacity’, requiring ‘the development of a multitude of new components and techniques to improve spectral efficiency, accommodate more users and connected devices, increase data rates, and reduce power consumption.’ Research at the 5G Development Centre will initially focus on:
- testing the ‘Titan MIMO’ system developed by Canada-based Nutaq Innovation; and
- verifying the conclusions of a recently published paper about hybrid beamforming algorithms for massive MIMO systems produced by the team at Nazarbayev University and their long-time research partners at the China Mobile Research Institute (CMRI) in Beijing.
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) will also collaborate with the 5G Centre, which is headed by Professor Corbett Rowell, the first Western Research Director at CMRI. Massive MIMO has been extensively researched to date by a variety of individuals and organisations but not yet ‘finetuned’ or tested in real-world conditions, the report adds.
Meanwhile, another Chinese company, equipment giant Huawei Technologies, is looking to lead the commercial field in developing Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) technology. Huawei announced the launch of a ‘state-of-the-art’ Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) open lab in Xi’an, China, dedicated to developing multi-vendor integration verification capabilities, expanding joint service innovations with customers, partners and industrial organisations and accelerating development of the open eco-system for NFV infrastructure, platforms and services.