Telecommunications giant Ericsson today announced two new radios with integrated antennas it claims will ease deployment pains and speed the rollout of mid-band 5G.

The company's antenna-integrated radio, or AIR, portfolio is based on technology acquired from the purchase of Kathrein Mobile Communication last year. As the name suggests, the products integrate the 5G radio and multi-band antenna into a single enclosure. The result is a product that requires far less space than a traditional radio and antenna deployment and helps to address space constraints faced by many communication service providers.

“It’s a footprint issue. At some network sites, size literally is everything. Communications service providers globally often have limited possibilities to increase the space occupied by network equipment," explained Per Narvinger, head of product area networks at Ericsson, in a statement. "They need solutions that fit in existing sites and still provide great performance."

Speaking of performance, the combination radio antennas are more than compact. Ericsson boasts that in simulated tests, the radios offered seven times greater broadband capacity than existing multi-band antennas.

The radios will be available in two varieties, Hybrid AIR and Interleaved Air. The former integrates both a mid-band 5G and LTE radios to support high-capacity traffic areas where massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is required.

Ericsson's Interleaved AIR, on the other hand, is designed to combine and interleave MIMO using multi-band passive antennas. This enables full antenna gain to be achieved for low bands while enabling mid-band 5G without a larger footprint.

The radios have already been deployed on Swisscom and Vodafone's 5G networks.

“At Swisscom, we have rolled out 5G technology nationwide as the first provider in Europe. We reached 90 percent population coverage at the end of 2019 already," said Daniel Staub, head of mobile at Swisscom, in a statement. "Close collaboration with Ericsson and deploying the Hybrid AIR helped us to reach that goal. We are now delivering wide mid-band capacity while reusing established sites and minimizing additional footprint."

Meanwhile, Ericsson worked with Vodafone to design the Interleaved AIR platform.

"This compact product saves space and simplifies the infrastructure needed at mobile sites, reducing total cost of ownership,” said Francisco Martin, head of radio products at Vodafone, in a statement.