Airtel Gabon and telecoms vendor ZTE Corporation have deployed what they describe as the industry’s first commercial Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) and Time Division Duplexing (TDD) Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) solution on a live network.
The installation is designed to address urban network congestion while laying the technical framework for the country's eventual transition to 5G.
This comes as MNOs across Central Africa are increasingly challenged by surging mobile broadband traffic - driven by digital financial services, cloud applications, and digital entertainment - while facing severe tower spatial constraints and high-power consumption costs.
The companies stated that the single-box multi-band configuration enables operators to squeeze higher throughput out of existing 4G spectrum without adding tower load.
The commercial deployment integrates FDD (which uses separate frequencies for uploading and downloading) and TDD (which shares a single frequency by alternating time slots) into a single active antenna unit. This multi-band integration aims to maximise spectrum usage, enhance site energy efficiency, and compress the physical hardware footprint on cell towers.
According to the firms, following the integration on the Airtel network, the project provided a 107% increase in site-level user throughput, a 20% rise in total traffic capacity, and a 41% boost in physical resource block efficiency.
At the 2.6 GHz layer level, throughput rose by 86%, while traffic capacity grew by 92% alongside a 60% gain in spectrum utilisation efficiency.
Lv Xun, MD of the ZTE Airtel global account, commented: "The successful commercial deployment of FDD+TDD Massive MIMO with Airtel Gabon represents an important milestone in our cooperation. The solution significantly enhances spectrum efficiency and improves user experience, enabling higher network capacity and better service performance.”
Razvan Ungureanu, CTO of Airtel Africa, added that the deployment of the solution enables maximum spectrum efficiency and boosts real-world network performance, while building the foundation for a future 5G network.
Share
