Saudi Telecom And Huawei Complete The World First Commercial Innovation Of SuperLink

Saudi Telecom and Huawei complete the world's first commercial innovation of SuperLink

Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and Huawei have completed the commercial innovation of the world's first IF SuperLink link in the Dammam region. After more than 6 months of live network operation, the link has excellent stability and performance, meeting the design requirements. The SuperLink solution has a single-antenna and single-link bandwidth of 10Gbps, which saves 67% of the antenna and 70% of the hardware, and provides a minimalist and large-bandwidth solution for 5G suburban coverage.

As one of the pioneers in 5G construction in the world, Saudi Arabia has started large-scale construction of 5G networks since 2019. 60% of the 5G sites on the existing network use microwave bearer, and urban areas mainly use long-distance E-band bearer. For suburbs and outer suburbs, E-band coverage cannot be used due to the distance. However, the use of traditional frequency bands is limited by frequency resources, sky surfaces, and tower loads. The capacity of a single link does not exceed 5Gbps, which cannot meet the needs of 5G for backhaul bandwidth, which greatly reduces the speed of STC's deployment of 5G in the suburbs.

In response to the above problems, Saudi STC and Huawei continued to innovate and develop a SuperLink solution to avoid parallel links, reduce the number of hardware by 70%, reduce antenna transportation, alignment costs, and tower rent by 67%, and greatly save TTM and TCO. The bandwidth of a single antenna and a single pipe in the conventional frequency band can reach 10Gbps. While solving the problem of tower space load-bearing, it can greatly increase the speed of 5G deployment in suburban areas.