Struggling with spectrum saturation and cell-edge performance? Meet the FDD mid-band radios built to break the bottle neck
- CSPs face growing pressure to deliver consistent cell-edge performance, where traditional TDD overlays fall short due to limited indoor reach and propagation challenges.
- CSPs need more than added spectrum, they need compact, intelligent solutions like AIR 3283 that strengthen network foundations.
Customer Solutions Director
Director of Product Performance for Ericsson Americas, Network Product Sales Support
Radio Requirement and Execution Director
Customer Solutions Director
Director of Product Performance for Ericsson Americas, Network Product Sales Support
Radio Requirement and Execution Director
Customer Solutions Director
Director of Product Performance for Ericsson Americas, Network Product Sales Support
Radio Requirement and Execution Director
Understanding the mid-band bottleneck
FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) mid-bands are approaching their limits, especially at the cell edge where user experience is most strained. Meanwhile, TDD overlays remain underutilized held back by coverage limitations rather than capacity. The need now is to rethink delivery, not just add bandwidth for mid-band, especially that the underlayed lowband, sub 1 GHz, carriers are extremely congested.
How field realities are shaping the innovations to break the mid-band bottleneck
As someone who's worked closely on the development and field testing of new antenna solutions, I’ve seen firsthand how conventional infrastructure often struggles to deliver where it matters most. That’s the challenge we set out to solve through our latest generation of Massive MIMO (M-MIMO) radios.
Ericsson’s AIR 3283 is a breakthrough in antenna design that reimagines how we approach mid-band deployment. This dual-band Antenna Integrated Radio (AIR) with 32 transmit and receive paths (32TRX) isn’t just a hardware evolution—it’s a smarter way forward.
- Compact and Lightweight: 50% lighter with double number of tranceiversand 40% more compact than legacy 16TRx units, making it ideal for densifying both urban and rural grids.
- Smarter Beamforming: Advanced 32TRX beamforming delivers targeted power with minimal interference, enhancing spectral efficiency across the board.
- Integrated Intelligence: Built-in eCPRI interfaces reduce processing demand on radio processors, boosting site efficiency without expanding the physical footprint
AIR 3283 is like building a new bridge over a river—not the one directing traffic, but the critical enabler that makes it possible to reroute flows intelligently. It allows CSPs to relieve congestion in overstretched areas and make better use of previously underutilized spectrum pathways.
How are these radios defining high-performing programmable networks?
Live operator network testing shows substantial improvements in a wide range of real-world deployment scenarios:
- Coverage was consistently better than 4T4R radios across cell center, mid-cell, and edge environments.
- Cell-edge downlink throughput increased by up to 150%, while uplink throughput improved by more than 100%.
- Mid-cell downlink and uplink throughput both increased by over 50%.
- Uplink coverage (power headroom) improved by nearly 200%.
- FDD+TDD carrier aggregation (CA) coverage exceeded 20%, with a 30% boost in cell-edge throughput.
These verified KPIs are just part of the story. When translated into capacity impact, they reflect up to 2x improvements in downlink capacity and 4x in uplink capacity—a meaningful transformation in how CSPs can scale their networks.
Figure 1. 2025 vs 2028 capacity saturation.
The foundational impact: four performance levers driving change
The AIR 3283 strengthens networks across four critical vectors:
- Increases sustainable FDD mid-band cell-edge traffic handling where demand is highest.
- Extends FDD mid-band coverage to offload low-band and improve extreme cell-edge quality.
- Improves utilization of existing TDD spectrum by balancing network load.
- Enhances FDD uplink and downlink performance to expand the effective TDD downlink footprint via carrier aggregation.
Together, these capabilities enable a foundational load-balancing effect across all bands—creating a network capacity multiplier that amplifies the value of each deployed radio.
A new playbook for deployment
Initial deployments of the AIR 3283 will target isolated hotspots—locations where low user throughput is a persistent challenge. These areas, often constrained by increasing congestion and limited resources, will benefit from digital sectoring and targeted enhancements. As LTE spectrum continues to be re-farmed, these early sites offer a high return on performance improvements.
At these sites, AIR 3283 brings immediate uplink performance gains for NR, while also expanding TDD downlink coverage through FDD-TDD carrier aggregation.
As deployment scales and AIR 3283 units are introduced on neighboring sites, FDD mid-band downlink performance will improve further. This densification reduces cell-edge interference and improves spectral efficiency. In parallel, CSPs will benefit from the continued migration from LTE to NR, paving the way for next-generation network experiences.
Why it matters
Ericsson’s M-MIMO radios, coupled with evolving software features and site strategies, are helping CSPs build smarter, more sustainable communications networks. With targeted performance improvements, better energy efficiency, and simpler deployment, AIR 3283 serves as a critical foundation for delivering reliable 5G—at scale and at the edge.
While AIR 3283 supports MU-MIMO, its cell-edge performance benefits primarily from advanced SU-MIMO beamforming. In FDD systems, beamforming relies on codebooks rather than channel reciprocity, making precise beam targeting especially important. Capacity gains in these environments stem from delivering stronger RF signals to intended users while minimizing interference across the network.