By Andre Fuetsch

AT&T CTO Andre Fuetsch  outlined why he is bullish about MIMO, including its ability to increase uplink speeds, during an online event.

Fuetsch is also the chairman of the O-RAN Alliance. At the LF Networking Open Networking and Edge Executive Forum yesterday (12 April), the executive explained MIMO was all about maximising wireless bandwidth while minimising interference, all of which creates the best quality and user experience.

“AT&T is leading several use cases, including MIMO base capabilities and optimisation of network capacity,” Fuetsch explained.

He said MIMO will also play a critical role in delivering network capacity enhancements for new use cases, especially those involving increased uplink usage.

AT&T and Nokia stated in late February they are collaborating on a distributed Massive MIMO project which could increase 5G uplink rates and capacity by up to 90 per cent.

Fuetsch stated optimised MIMO was “green” because it reduces the spectrum and power required to transfer each bit.

He said MIMO could accelerate the availability of carrier-grade commercial products.

Fuetsch noted Linux Foundation collaboration unit LF Networking had produced blueprints for 5G which demonstrated how open source groups could work together to demonstrate how services could be orchestrated across the RAN and core.

The blueprints combine mature, open source-based technologies and communities.

GM of networking, edge and IoT at the Linux Foundation, Arpit Joshipura stated the blueprints aggregated components of software subsystems so members can reproduce or add to them.

While the blueprints are undergoing testing in laboratories, they are not currently commercial: “There are case studies under development that will have real deployments of 5G super blueprints,” Joshipura said.