PRESS RELEASE: Recently, China Mobile Yancheng deployed and tested innovative green antennas with Huawei in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, making it one of the first branches of China Mobile to pilot the use of such antennas in China.
The green antennas adopt Huawei’s energy-efficient technology architecture, which removes all internal cables to reduce feeder loss. The new antenna solution enables better coverage, and improves user experience through higher data rates achieved. The goal of the green antennas is to reduce power consumption by improving system energy efficiency, and is just one of China Mobile Yancheng’s efforts to reduce energy usage and carbon emissions of 5G networks, in response to national and China Mobile Group’s sustainable development strategies.
The test demonstrated that replacing existing antennas with green antennas effectively improves network energy efficiency. A conventional six-band antenna contains 100 meters of internal cables, which cause significant feeder loss. This is a long-standing problem in the industry that needed to be addressed, since antennas are the last element in a wireless RF system. In answer to this, Huawei launched the energy-efficient antenna architecture solution — the first of its kind in the industry to remove internal cables from antennas – greatly improving the end-to-end energy efficiency of RF systems. The green antennas are manufactured using automatic laser welding technology, which is more environmentally friendly than traditionally used electroplating, while ensuring higher precision and consistency. Through tests performed in China Mobile’s live network in Yancheng, it was discovered that the green antennas result in multiple improvements, including 30% extended coverage through 1.5–3 dB higher antenna gain at the 700 MHz, 900 MHz and FA frequency bands, 40% better user experience, and nearly 20% higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In addition, the green antennas enable reducing the power of RRUs by 20% while keeping the same user-perceived data rate and coverage. These test results demonstrate that the green antennas support two energy efficiency improvement modes — improving network performance with power remaining the same and reducing energy consumption with network performance remaining the same — which mark innovative breakthroughs in reducing the energy consumption of RF systems.
Tests on China Mobile’s live network in Yancheng
China Mobile Yancheng will continue to work with Huawei to develop greener and more simplified antennas, build high-performance, low-carbon, and simplified 5G networks, and accelerate the implementation of innovative 5G and 5.5G applications. The company’s bigger vision is to promote digital and intelligent network construction with a goal of helping the successful implementation of national and China Mobile Group’s sustainable development strategies.