NEC Corporation lately unveiled its newest growth, a brand new Radio Unit (RU) for 5G Sub-6GHz band base stations. This revolutionary system leverages Massive MIMO expertise and is slated to succeed NEC’s present built-in antenna RU. The firm plans to launch the brand new unit within the first half of fiscal yr 2026, following a spherical of efficiency evaluations and verification checks.
NEC has a stable popularity as a frontrunner in Massive MIMO expertise, having shipped over 50,000 items domestically and internationally since 2020. This new mannequin was developed in response to rising societal wants for elevated communication visitors and better vitality effectivity. Promising important enhancements in uplink and downlink throughput, the brand new unit boasts a compact, light-weight and power-efficient design.
The new RU pairs seamlessly with NEC’s virtualized RAN (vRAN), giving it better versatility in base station deployment places. This flexibility contributes to a discount in operators’ complete prices. The unit additionally harnesses the ability of MU-MIMO expertise, which permits it to take care of steady, high-speed communication with a number of terminals concurrently, even in crowded environments and at excessive speeds.
Results from simulations counsel the brand new system might enhance uplink throughput by roughly 48% and downlink throughput by round 54%, in comparison with NEC’s present mannequin. Moreover, a future software program improve is anticipated to push uplink efficiency as much as roughly 55%. Power consumption can be projected to cut back considerably, with estimates suggesting a drop of about 42% to 315W throughout regular circumstances, and 30% to 630W or much less throughout peak operation.
By incorporating compact items and a fanless design, the scale and weight of the brand new system have additionally come down by roughly 23% and 33%, respectively. This compact and light-weight design might allow single individual on-site installations, resulting in price decreases in set up labor.
The new RU, built-in with the NEC’s vRAN, will broaden the fronthaul distance between the RU and the Distributed Unit (DU) from the present 30km to 40km, successfully controlling communication delays with software program. The new mannequin additionally comes geared up to dynamically assign RUs and optical transmission paths in response to fluctuating communication calls for – serving to optimize each capital expenditures (CAPEX) and working bills (OPEX).
NEC goals to collaborate with telecommunication carriers to conduct efficiency evaluations and verification checks for a product launch in Japan within the first half of fiscal yr 2026. Internationally, the corporate hopes to compliantly meet requirements and necessities for a worldwide launch deliberate for the second half of fiscal yr 2026. The world’s largest mobile-related occasion, MWC Barcelona 2026, will function NEC’s platform to showcase the brand new system.