Page 16 - Evolution of 4G LTE to 5G

Full-Dimension MIMO

• Beamforming and MIMO have been identified as key technologies to address
the future capacity demand. But so far 3GPP evaluations for these features

have mostly considered antenna arrays that exploit the azimuth dimension.

• So 3GPP RAN is now studying how two-dimensional antenna arrays can
further improve the LTE spectral efficiency by also exploiting the vertical
dimension for beamforming and MIMO operations. Also, while the standard

currently supports MIMO systems with up to 8 antenna ports, the new study
will look into high-order MIMO systems with up to 64 antenna ports at the

eNB, to become more relevant to the use of higher frequencies in the future.

16