For the past few months I’ve had a Band 78 NR active antenna unit sitting next to my desk.
It’s a very cool bit of kit that doesn’t get enough love, but I thought I’d pop open the radome and take a peek inside.
![](https://nickvsnetworking.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Active-Antenna-Unit-Teardown-1024x768.png)
What I found very interesting is that it’s not all antennas in there!
![](https://nickvsnetworking.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/32T32R-AAU-1024x618.png)
There are the expected number of antennas (I mean if I opened it up and found 31 antennas I’d have been surprised) but they don’t take up the whole volume of the unit, only about half,
![](https://nickvsnetworking.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/AAU.png)
Well, after that strip show, back to sitting in my office until I need to test something 5G SA again…
Woahhh 😁 – there’s probably some super funky engineering behind getting the most out of this. Does each also have some chips, or it’s all centrally controlled from a single controller?
BTW: Somehow I was expecting 32 rows and 32 columns 🤪
Hi, that is a 64T64R unit. You can also tell by the first two digits for the model number, 6488.
Cool photos by the way.