This is thought to be pone of the fastest data downlinks speeds for 4G mobile phone downlink yet demonstrated.

Peak 1.2Gbit/s download speeds were achieved by using a combination of up to three downlink FDD carriers on which carriers can be received separately on four transmission layers (4×4 MIMO, or multiple in, multiple out) and 256QAM data modulation.

The demonstration ‘handset’ ran using a Huawei Kirin 970 smartphone SoC.

What would this level of download speed be used for? Well, the Huawei chip has built-in AI acceleration, which will support features such as image recognition, voice interactions and intelligent camera applications.

Ai Wei, Fellow at Huawei, writes:

“As mobile Internet is driving the growth of the industry, operators worldwide are all utilising their spectrum resources to provide the best user experience possible. The Kirin 970 can support 4×4 MIMO, 5CC CA, 256QAM and other advanced technologies, taking consumers to the stunning Gbps level of high-speed wireless networks.”

3GPP 4×4 MIMO mandates four receive antennas on the device side, so four RF connections are needed.

The receive antenna data paths were provided by the 4×4 MIMO functionality of the R&S CMW500 wideband radio communication tester.

Anton Messmer, mobile radio test business v-p at Rohde & Schwarz, writes:

“For testing LTE in unlicensed spectrum configurations, the downlink carriers can be set up in the 5GHz unlicensed spectrum.”