November 30 – Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and Huawei completed the world’s first commercial innovation of medium frequency SuperLink link in the Dammam region in May this year. After more than six months of live network operation, the link has achieved excellent operational stability and design requirements, with a single antenna and single link bandwidth of 10Gbps, saving 67% of the antenna and 70% of the hardware, providing a minimalist, high bandwidth solution for 5G suburban coverage.
Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s 5G construction pioneers, has been building a large-scale 5G network since 2019. The current network uses microwave bearers for 60% of the 5G sites, and mainly uses long-range E-band bearers in urban areas, while for suburban and remote areas, the distance is too far to use E-band coverage. The use of traditional frequency bands is limited by frequency resources, sky and tower loading, and the capacity of a single link does not exceed 5Gbps, which cannot meet the demand of 5G for backhaul bandwidth, making STC’s deployment of 5G in suburban areas much slower.
To address these issues, STC Saudi Arabia and Huawei continue to innovate and develop SuperLink solutions to avoid parallel links, reduce the number of hardware by 70%, and reduce antenna transportation, alignment costs and tower rental by 67%, resulting in significant savings in TTM and TCO. With a bandwidth of 10Gbps for a single antenna and a single pipe in the conventional band, it can significantly increase the speed of 5G deployment in suburban areas while solving the tower space-bearing problem.
The SuperLink solution consists of the industry’s first multi-band antennas and quadruple-play carrier aggregation CA ODUs.
The multi-band antenna can cover 6 GHz, 7 GHz, 8 GHz or 13 GHz, 15 GHz, and 18 GHz bands, solving the problem of installing multiple antennas to form parallel links when multiple bands are combined to provide large bandwidth. During the bandwidth evolution, operators do not need to add one antenna for another band, which relieves the pressure on tower space and eliminates the need for re-alignment, making deployment and upgrade easier.
Four-in-one Carrier Aggregation CA (CA) ODUs, with 4 channels integrated in one hardware, can reduce the number of ODUs by 75%, while supporting higher modulation modes and larger channel bandwidths, increasing the capacity of a single ODU by 500%.
