13th December,2004

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced that high-speed packet transmission with 1 Gbps data rate in the downlink was achieved successfully in a laboratory experiment using fourth-generation (4G) mobile communication radio access equipments on August 20, 2004, considering field experiments in the early next year.

The implemented 4G radio access equipments employ variable-spreading-factor spread orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (VSF-Spread OFDM) radio access method and multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) multiplexing technique using new signal detection algorithm in order to achieve 1Gbps data transmission with 100MHz bandwidth in the downlink.

DoCoMo achieved 100Mbps and 20Mbps data rate transmission in the downlink and uplink, respectively, in the outdoor environments with the moving speed of about 30 km/h in July 2003.

NTT DoCoMo is currently conducting indoor tests with various radio conditions as preparation for future field tests to develop a 4G global standard in coordination with the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector. In Japan, the telecommunications council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is overseeing efforts to develop technologies for 4G commercial services by 2010.