Deutsche Telekom and its Greek subsidiary Cosmote are testing the W-band as 5G backhaul spectrum, together Ericsson. In trials at Deutsche Telekom’s Mobile Backhaul Service Center in Cosmote headquarters, Athens, the partners successfully proved the viability of frequency bands beyond 100GHz, such as W-band, for multi-gigabit wireless backhaul capacities for 5G and 6G.
The joint field trial demonstrated for the first time a W-band wireless hop over a 1.5km range with telecom- grade availability using pre-commercial equipment. This W-band hop was installed parallel with a 1.5km E-band hop to show that the W-band has a similar long-term performance to E-band. The trial recorded speeds of 5.7Gbps over the 1.5km distance and topped 10Gbps over 1km hops.
The result proved that W-band (92GHz -114GHz) can perform on the same level as the E-band (70/80GHz), which is currently the only frequency band supporting 10Gbps wireless backhaul capacities for 4G and 5G. The W-band is expected to add more untapped spectrum needed for high-capacity wireless transport.
