Case Study: NTT DOCOMO achieves a 12-month go-to-market advantage with Keysight Channel Sounding Reference Solution

NTT DOCOMO Gains a Go-toMarket Advantage in 5G with Flexible Channel Sounding

NTT Docomo needed to characterize millimeter-wave over-the-air propagation and derive accurate channel models for 5G use cases at 28 GHz and 67 GHz so it could deploy high-capacity, low-latency services without overdesigning the network. To meet this challenge the operator partnered with Keysight and adopted the Keysight Channel Sounding Reference Solution with PathWave to capture wideband MIMO measurements across urban/rural and fixed/mobile scenarios and extract parameters like frequency response, path loss, PDP, Doppler, AoA and AoD.

Keysight delivered a scalable test architecture combining metrology-grade hardware and PathWave software for calibration, signal generation, analysis and parameter extraction, enabling real-time, high-resolution channel sounding. With Keysight’s solution NTT Docomo doubled its air-interface tests, gained visibility into 12 key channel characteristics, reduced design risk and shortened development time by about 20%, and achieved an estimated 12‑month go-to-market advantage.

NTT Docomo

Yukihiko Okumura

Group Leader