EJL Wireless Research Analyzes ZTE 5G NR gNodeB

Half Moon Bay, CA February 11, 2021:  EJL Wireless Research is excited to announce two new reports to its DesigN Analysis-Infrastructure (DNA-I) research series. The DNA-I series focuses on radio access network equipment teardown reports. These reports provide invaluable insight into the design philosophies and architectures for the major radio equipment OEMs as well as a full bill of materials (BOM) for major semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) and passive component products and suppliers.

The new reports are on the ZTE ZXRAN V9200 digital baseband unit supporting 4G and 5G NR. RRUs and AAUs and the ZTE 5G NR A9611 S35 64T64R AAU. The V9200 can also support multi-mode 2G/3G/4G RRUs but cannot reuse older generation B8200 cards. ZTE has kept the basic architecture of its prior generation multi-mode 2G/3G/4G ZXSDR B8200 BBU platform while upgrading to support 5G NR capabilities including massive-MIMO and 100MHz cells. The A9611 S35 massive-MIMO 64T64R AAU represents a mature design/architecture for volume deployments in China and globally, supporting 200W RF output power. The combination of the V9200 and A9611 S35 forms the standard 5G NR massive-MIMO gNodeB solution from ZTE Corporation.

“The V9200 architecture is based upon the industry standard 2U 19 inch rack mounted footprint and can support downlink (DL) throughput of 20Gbps and up to 30 100MHz cells. Up to five baseband processing cards can be supported in a single V9200 chassis and different cabinet solutions (VC9xxx) allow for up to eight V9200 BBUs to be co-sited together in a single cabinet,” says Lum. ■