Ericsson today revealed a trio of new mid-band 5G radios and a suite of six radio access network (RAN) compute products that it intends to release at the end of the year.

The gear features the Swedish vendor’s next-generation custom silicon, which it now calls Ericsson Silicon, that enabled the vendor to increase performance in a smaller footprint that weighs less and consumes less power. 

The weight and power consumption characteristics of the radios, which include massive multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antennas, are especially unique, Sibel Tombaz, Ericsson’s head of 5G highband and active antenna systems, told SDxCentral in a phone interview. One of the radios, which weighs in at 20 kilograms, is the lowest weight radio in the market, she said.

The compact footprint and lightweight features are important "because the large-scale installation of massive MIMO gear across a network is no small expense, and compact, lightweight designs can help operators minimize deployment costs," Ed Gubbins, principal analyst at GlobalData, told SDxCentral. However, he added, Ericsson's industry-leading claims on size and weight could evaporate if one of its competitors unveils new products that close that gap.

Ericsson’s AIR 6419 massive MIMO radio, which is designed for high rise and urban capacity sites, is coupled with a 64T64R antenna array that delivers up to 200 megahertz of bandwidth. The AIR 3258 includes a 32T32R massive MIMO antenna that supports up to 400 megahertz of bandwidth, and the AIR 3219 is packed with a 32T32R antenna array that supports up to 200 megahertz of bandwidth.

All three radios include passive cooling, 320 watts of output power, and weigh in at a range of 20 to 27 kilograms. Collectively, the new products position Ericsson well to address the mid-band 5G radio market, according to Gubbins. "This is a really important market segment worldwide that all of the RAN vendors are focused on," he said.

New products in Ericsson’s RAN Compute portfolio include two basebands for indoor deployments, two RAN processors for indoor networks, and two radio processors for outdoor environments. The vendor claims these components deliver throughput rates up to 50% higher than its previous generation of mid-band RAN products and consume up to 20% less power. 

Those gains are all due in large part to Ericsson Silicon, Tombaz said, adding that the vendor intends to start sharing more details about its custom in-house developed system-on-a-chip (SoC) that it uses across its portfolio of radios, RAN compute, and transport.

Ericsson updates its SoC on a yearly cycle, but it hasn’t showcased its silicon much prior to this latest round of equipment, according to Tombaz. “With the new challenges that 5G brings in terms of the larger bandwidth, amount of processing capability because the number of antenna elements increase, it’s really becoming more and more important to talk about the need of processing and to do it much more efficiently,” she said.

This is Ericsson’s fourth generation of massive MIMO radios. And massive MIMO is especially important in mid-band spectrum deployments because it can significantly boost coverage with beamforming and increase the spectral efficiency up to three times, thereby lifting capacity in kind, Tombaz explained.

“To really get the best out of this mid-band spectrum, we believe operators need to deploy massive MIMO, not only in the cities, which we have seen in 4G, but they need to scale the massive MIMO to suburban, to rural so they can get the best coverage and also the best spectrum efficiency from this valuable band,” Tombaz said.

Ericsson’s new massive MIMO mid-band radios can be adjusted to support other bands, but the first release of the 64T64R radio will support 3.4 GHz to 3.6 GHz and the 32T32R variants support bands between 2.4 GHz and 2.8 GHz. The AIR 3258 radio is specifically designed for European operators and that continent’s complex spectrum conditions, while the AIR 6419 and AIR 3219 support mid-band spectrum that is more broadly available and in use or forthcoming globally, Tombaz explained.

Ericsson also later this year plans to release Cloud RAN, software that virtualizes the compute piece of the RAN, but these massive MIMO mid-band radios aren’t part of that effort since these adhere to Ericsson’s traditional, tightly integrated RAN framework. 

The vendor recently inked a multi-billion dollar, five-year contract with T-Mobile US for 5G RAN that would likely involve the procurement of these radios, basebands, and processors coming from Ericsson later this year. The operator is undergoing a massive $40 billion network upgrade cycle and aggressively deploying 5G on its mid-band spectrum holdings. 

Ericsson also last month released its network slicing software for 5G networks that will allow operators to dynamically create separate allotments of RAN for various enterprise use cases. 

The vendor ended 2020 as the second largest RAN vendor globally, and it improved its RAN revenue share outside of China, accounting for 35% to 40% of the overall RAN market, excluding China, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group. 

Photo credit: Ericsson