PRESS RELEASE: During the Huawei Analyst Summit 2023, Huawei released the Generalized Antenna Efficiency White Paper, analyzed the technology trends in improving antenna efficiency, and shared the insights that it has gained from exploring innovation in this direction.

The entire ICT industry has been paying significant attention to improving network energy efficiency and performance, where end-to-end network optimization is broadly accepted as an essential factor for achieving this. In mobile communications, antennas enable the connection between networks and user equipment, and therefore play a decisive role in network energy efficiency and performance. A comprehensive evaluation on the impact of antennas on network energy efficiency and performance from the perspective of energy processing is therefore necessary, for the industry to improve antenna product design and build energy-efficient and high-performance networks.

The white paper introduces the concept of generalized antenna efficiency and explains its impact on network energy efficiency and performance. The generalized antenna efficiency is divided into three categories:

  • RF efficiency refers to the proportion of RF energy that an antenna converts into electromagnetic wave energy to the RF energy input. Higher antenna RF efficiency means that a base station can improve its coverage without increasing power consumption, or use a lower transmit power to achieve the same coverage goals.
  • Coverage efficiency refers to the proportion of electromagnetic wave energy that an antenna projects to a target area based on geographical coverage, to the total radiated energy. Higher antenna coverage efficiency can lead to stronger signals towards users in sectors and less neighboring cell interference, improving the coverage quality of the entire network. Alternatively, this can reduce base station power consumption without compromising the coverage quality.
  • Beamforming efficiency refers to the proportion of electromagnetic wave energy that an antenna projects to an area where user is located through dynamic beamforming. Improving the beamforming efficiency of antennas can increase the signal to interference plus noise ratio(SINR) of MIMO user equipment, user-perceived data rates, and cell capacity. As such, with higher antenna beamforming efficiency, the network consumes less power when transmitting the same volume of data.

Eric Zhao, President of Huawei Antenna Business Unit, remarked, “Though accounting for just a small share of network investment, antennas can significantly affect network energy efficiency and performance. Boosting the generalized antenna efficiency has become the focus of innovation in the antenna industry. Huawei will continue to invest in basic antenna technology research and product development to comprehensively improve antenna efficiency, helping mobile network operators build high-performance and environmentally sustainable networks.”