ZTE, AIS, And Mediatek Launch EU Aggregation Technology, Latest Development In 5G-A

Bangkok /PRNewswire/ - ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of information and communications technology solutions, in collaboration with Thailand's largest mobile operator AIS, and MediaTek, held a 5G-A UE Aggregation demonstration at the AZ Innovation Center, Bangkok.

As applications such as extended reality (XR), 4K live broadcasting , and immersive metaverse become increasingly popular , single user equipment (UE) faces constraints in terms of power, spectrum, and channel capacity. UE aggregation is an attractive solution that supports Remote UEs to work together with neighboring Relay UEs. Relay UEs utilize spare resources to improve the uplink performance of Remote UEs. This effectively solves the bottleneck of single-device capabilities .

UE aggregation integrates three dimensions of cooperation to create a sophisticated and efficient uplink transmission chain:

• Power Aggregation : Relay UE performs signal forwarding , optimizing uplink connectivity in areas with weak network coverage.
• Wideband Aggregation: Relay UEs provide unused spectrum resources, increasing the uplink throughput of Remote UEs.
• Channel Aggregation: Remote UE and Relay simultaneously establish independent communication links which realizes multi-path transmission , and improves reliability and redundancy.

The live 5G-A UE Aggregation trial was conducted in AZ center lab with AIS commercial 5G network configuration using 5G gNodeB and ZTE core network equipment. MediaTek supplied a prototype terminal equipped with UE Aggregation feature. The test scenario simulates the collaboration between Remote UE and Relay UE which is comparable to single-device configuration .

Performance was then evaluated based on wireless uplink throughput and real-time 4K video streaming from mobile devices with the following results:

• Uplink speeds for edge users are tripled thanks to UE Aggregation.
• Without aggregation, the uplink throughput does not support stable 4K live streaming , resulting in lag and stuck effects in the video display.
• When the aggregation feature is enabled, the uplink supports smooth, high-quality 4K live streaming consistently, without any visible lag in the video display.

UE aggregation has been implemented in the 3GPP Release 18 specification, and continues to evolve in subsequent versions (Releases 19 and 20). The next versions will support multi-path routing , multi-relay architecture , inter-DU/CU coordination, and intelligent low-latency path optimization —the basis for use cases in industrial IoT, vehicle-to-everything (V2X), and XR.