Fujitsu Developed Groundbreaking Millimeter Wave Chip Technology for 5G Wireless Devices

Fujitsu has announced the development of a new 5G millimeter wave chip that supports multi beam multiplexing (excluding polarization multiplexing), allowing a single millimeter wave chip of a 5G base station radio unit (RU) to multiplex up to four beams. This development is part of the “Post 5G Information and Communication System Enhanced Infrastructure Research and Development Project” commissioned by the Japan New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization.
In traditional technology, using a single millimeter wave chip to generate a single beam results in larger RUs and increased power consumption. Fujitsu stated that when applying the newly developed technology to actual base stations, high-speed and high-capacity communication of over 10Gbps can be achieved using half the size of traditional RU. This allows the system to use fewer millimeter wave chips, ultimately resulting in a 30% reduction in power consumption per RU.

Figure 1: Comparison image of RU using a conventional millimeter wave chip and RU applying this technology
5G network technology is expected to achieve higher speed and capacity by effectively utilizing wireless resources in the millimeter wave frequency band. Although this method provides significant potential for improving communication speed and capacity, millimeter and other high-frequency radio waves are often obstructed by obstacles, making long-distance communication difficult. One possible solution to this challenge involves covering more radio base stations within an area, which will help solve issues such as RU miniaturization, energy conservation, and cost reduction. To address these challenges, from June 2020 to June 2023, Fujitsu Limited was committed to developing technologies to improve RU performance under a project initiated by NEDO, which can be used to support 5G information and communication systems. Fujitsu’s research results have developed a technology that achieves multi beam multiplexing on a single chip through millimeter wave beam formation, enabling it to provide four times the speed and larger capacity of traditional RUs of the same size, significantly reducing energy and costs.
Fujitsu began developing base station hardware equipped with this technology in August 2023, with the goal of using this technology for commercial deployment of RUs worldwide starting in the fiscal year 2024, and contributing to the spread of millimeter waves in the global market and the telecommunications industry. Subsequently, beam multiplexing technology will be applied to base station (CU/DU) products and will be available globally in fiscal year 2025. In addition to contributing to reducing the carbon footprint of telecommunications operators and other commercial users, Fujitsu will continue to develop technology to promote the development of the network industry and contribute to the rapid deployment of next-generation communication infrastructure.