Huawei Named Sole Leader in GlobalData 2026 Microwave Backhaul Assessment

Huawei has been recognized as the sole Leader in GlobalData’s 2026 Microwave Backhaul Competitive Landscape Assessment. The recognition is based on the company’s technical capabilities and market performance and highlights Huawei’s position in the development of global microwave backhaul technologies.

GlobalData identifies microwave backhaul as an efficient alternative to fiber for connecting base stations in areas with geographical limitations or budget constraints. The assessment compares leading microwave vendors across four key areas: E-band, short-haul, long-haul, and overall portfolio breadth.

In naming Huawei the only Leader, GlobalData highlighted the company’s technical capabilities, product competitiveness, and contribution to the development of microwave backhaul solutions.

Huawei’s E-band solutions include full outdoor and split E-band products with high output power and advanced capacity. According to GlobalData, Huawei’s full duplex E-band solution enables simultaneous transmission and reception over the same channel, providing an effective way to increase backhaul throughput.

In the short-haul microwave segment, GlobalData highlights Huawei’s indoor unit solutions, which provide high capacity within a compact hardware footprint. This approach enables high performance with smaller equipment and can help reduce deployment costs.

For long-haul microwave applications, Huawei’s solution is distinguished by high switching capacity and support for significantly more RF channels within a single device compared with the industry average. The high capacity architecture is designed to help operators accommodate growing traffic requirements without proportionally increasing costs.

GlobalData also highlighted Huawei’s antenna innovations. These include quad-band antennas, which can reduce the number of antennas required and lower installation costs, as well as 90 cm large-diameter E-band antennas combined with Intelligent Beam Tracking (IBT) to improve link stability and extend transmission distances.

Another highlighted technology is Huawei’s spherical MB² antenna, which features directionally adjustable feeders and provides greater flexibility for real-world network deployments.

According to GlobalData, Huawei’s E-band full duplex technology can deliver up to 50 Gbps of fiber-like capacity and has already entered commercial deployment. The MB² antenna can support up to 10 directions with a single antenna, helping reduce site complexity. It also supports co-channel interference cancellation (CCIC), which can increase spectrum reuse by up to four times. The technology is also moving into commercial deployment.

Huawei said it will continue investing in microwave technologies to accelerate the deployment of 10 Gbps 5G and 5G-A backhaul and enable more efficient, intelligent, and resilient connectivity for operators and users worldwide.