I don't know if you found that in the first year of 5G commercial use in 2019, there are still many doubts about "why use 5G" and "what is 5G except fast", and in 2021, everyone faces 5G's ideas more: "Why not?" ”
The value of 5G has been recognized by both the consumer market and the enterprise market in the process of digitization in thousands of industries, and has entered the fast lane of large-scale popularization.
There is no end to the upgrade iteration of the network, it is time to take a step towards the next mountain, thinking about how to enhance the vitality of 5G networks in the next 10 or 20 years, and move forward with high quality, high efficiency and sustainability.
As we all know, China has built the world's largest 5G network, which has truly led the innovation and industrialization of 5G technology. Chinese operators, suppliers and developers in various industries have naturally become the "outpost" of the times, taking the lead in opening up a new task of exploring the evolution of 5G.
On December 22, China Mobile and Huawei jointly held the "5G-Advanced Dual-Chain Converged Wireless Innovation Achievements Conference", and together with industry partners, jointly released the 5G-Advanced dual-chain converged wireless innovation results.
The reason why this conference is special, on the one hand, as the main force of building a network power, digital China and smart society, and the vanguard of technological innovation, China Mobile's exploration has benchmarking and reference significance; at the same time, 5G-Advanced has attracted a lot of industry partners to participate at the beginning, accelerating the rapid birth and landing of phased achievements, which has become a new paradigm for 5G evolution.
This is an opportunity, at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, let us accompany the spring blossoms of 5G-Advanced to see what kind of posture the next spring of wireless networks will come to us.
Farming: Soil in the Age of Digital Intelligence
From a global perspective, the development of the 5G industry is extremely rapid, the current commercial network has reached more than 180, the number of 5G users is more than 540 million, 5G supports the construction of mobile applications, industrial Internet, smart cities, etc., in fact, it has become a digital and intelligent network base. Some reports predict that in 2030, mobile network traffic will become the main bearer of Internet traffic.
As 5G becomes more and more important, the more business scale, complexity and technical challenges it faces, and it needs to continue to evolve from three aspects.
1. Ability to continue to break through. Application innovation based on 5G technology is booming, meta-universe, VR/AR and other large-traffic services continue to grow, more and more applications of network services, services are becoming more and more complex, the future network pressure will increase several times or even dozens of times, which requires greater bandwidth, lower latency, stronger connections, and more efficient operation and maintenance.
2. Support the transformation of digital intelligence. Part of the commercial value and industrial value of 5G comes from the support for the digital application of the industry. Taking China Mobile as an example, it has carried out a large number of 5G application practices with Huawei in mines, ports, manufacturing, high-speed rail, medical and other fields. With the continuous deepening and expansion of the industry's digital scenarios, higher requirements are also put forward for 5G networks, such as large uplink capabilities, precise positioning, green and low-carbon, and so on.
3. The standard needs to be preceded. Each generation of wireless network construction, the need for standards first, in the use of wireless resources, technology evolution direction, etc., based on standards innovation can make technology rapid innovation and landing to the application and terminal. In the 5G stage, almost all of them are new needs, new problems, and new challenges that have never appeared in the history of wireless networks, such as visual perception of smart transportation, digital twins, carbon neutrality, etc., so the standard of 5G evolution is inseparable from the breakthrough of cutting-edge technology, the insight of in-depth industry, and the joint participation of industrial partners.
5G needs to continue to evolve and inject more capabilities. In the face of this situation, China Mobile has chosen to take the initiative to deepen the blank technology garden.
As early as 2020, China Mobile and Huawei took the lead in proposing the industrial vision of 5G evolution in the industry, and reached a consensus on the need for 5G to evolve to the next stage in collaboration with all parties in the industry. In April 2021, the 3GPP officially named the 5G evolution 5G-Advanced, marking a new phase in the evolution of 5G.
Xu Xiaodong, chief expert of China Mobile Group, shared that innovation for 5G-Advanced is a continuous process, and in August 2021, China Mobile jointly launched the 5G-Advanced innovation chain industry chain integration action plan with 16 companies in the industry, actively exploring new technologies and new solutions guided by issues such as "the gap between existing standard technologies and industry needs", "the pain points of existing standard technologies in actual deployment", and "the demand and expectations for wireless communications in the next decade". And promote their landing in the 3GPP.
After four months of collision, 5G-Advanced has produced many iconic technologies and applications.
Among them, projects such as duplex evolution, terminal aggregation, and XR multimedia service enhancement have helped the construction of excellent networks; the application of AI in the physical layer, network autonomous driving, lower cost and more simplified IoT projects have made it possible for networks to "wisdom and simplicity". Based on the social responsibility of green double carbon, 5G-Advanced is also exploring projects such as network energy saving, lower power consumption applications, elastic cell or multi-spectrum flexible applications. At present, the original system development and test verification work has been carried out on a number of 5G-Advanced landmark technologies such as synaesthesia integration, full-duplex, and passive IoT.
It can be found that as the promoters of the 5G-Advanced standard, China Mobile and Huawei are also the number one "gardeners" of this 5G evolution test field, striving to cultivate the fertile soil for 5G development.
Incubation: When industrial innovation is in progress
Since it is a "final exam", you may wish to speak directly with the results to see what changes 5G-Advanced has brought to the industry? What business value can 5G evolution bring?
At the "5G-Advanced Dual-Chain Convergence Wireless Innovation Achievements Conference" on December 22, we can see innovators from all walks of life building digital solutions that meet their own needs.
Dahua, a video-centric provider of smart IoT solutions, has found that 5G can meet the urgent needs of intelligent video recognition, convenient deployment of hardware cameras, and on-demand customization of applications in the process of serving government, enterprise and civil digital services. Among them, many technological breakthroughs are needed, and Dahua dispatches all cameras under the entire cellular base station through the original peak scheduling system, so that the cameras will not form peak concurrency, thereby greatly reducing the bandwidth requirements of the entire network deployment and reducing application costs. At present, Dahua's solutions have been applied to the construction of Leishen Mountain Vulcan Mountain, urban sewage management, air conditioning scheduling and other fields, helping to control energy consumption and help digital upgrading.
The UAV field generally faces low positioning accuracy and easy interference with aircraft, so the Civil Aviation Administration of China vigorously supports the application of 5G technology in the aviation field, promotes the application of 5G synaesthesia, and performs large-bandwidth perception and control of UAV communication technology, thereby promoting the development of the UAV industry. The integration of communication perception has also become one of the directions of 5G evolution, and the Civil Aviation Administration of China and China Mobile have joined hands to innovate to accelerate the arrival of smart aviation based on 5G synaesthesia.
The popularity of smart homes means a lot to every home. In 2019, Haier jointly established the Haier Yi network 5G joint innovation lab with China Mobile and Huawei, and the CollaborativeIoT Internet of Things technology co-created can support longer-distance power sensing and flexible deployment based on cellular main network infrastructure, which can not only meet the upgrade needs of smart home appliances, but also meet the application needs of typical scenarios such as manufacturing and animal husbandry.
At present, the hot metaverse concept, with VR/AR as the entrance to the virtual world, is also inseparable from the continuous evolution of 5G networks. Yixin Advanced Technology has jointly innovated with China Mobile and others, developed the industry's first augmented reality interactive projector, through projection to achieve real-time integration of virtual information and real three-dimensional scenes, has been applied to kindergartens, early education institutions, playgrounds, science and technology museums, museums and other places, so that children and users can enjoy an immersive experience.
The active participation of industrial partners is an unprecedented standard. The process of finding the interface between business and 5G technology in various industries has triggered more and more innovation singularities and constantly broken people's imagination of 5G.
Blossom: Proven industrial value
It can be found that the special feature of 5G-Advanced, in addition to the leading nature of the technology itself, is that through "double-chain integration", a new paradigm of industrial innovation has been explored. Major operators, equipment vendors, industry organizations and upstream and downstream partners of the industrial chain around the world will jointly explore the evolution of 5G along the three directions of excellent network, wisdom and simplicity, and low carbon and high efficiency.
Based on the above results, today, we can roughly summarize the value of 5G-Advanced dual-chain integration, a new paradigm of 5G evolution.
1. Union. 5G-Advanced dual-chain integration is a test field for China Mobile and Huawei to establish technology together with industrial partners, and from the beginning, the industrial chain can participate in technological innovation. From the real industry scenario problems, the demand for network and technological innovation direction is put forward, and the new needs and changes of 5G networks are more targeted, shortening the innovation cycle and uncertainty.
For this change, Xu Xiaodong, chief expert of China Mobile, believes that 5G is very beautiful and must be solved well. We are facing a variety of problems raised by industry customers, and we need more industry customers to improve it with us, so more industry customers are involved in technology iteration and evolution, and participate in the evolution of 5G-Advanced.
2. Authenticity. At present, the results of 5G-Advanced dual-chain integration are all tested by china mobile and Huawei technologies in the real environment of the field, ensuring that technological innovation is not a paper article from the source, and can play a practical role in the future to help the industry and society improve quality and efficiency. China Mobile, together with Huawei and industry partners, explored key scenarios, technologies and directions of 5G evolution, laying a foundation for the true landing of technology.
3. Lead. For the global mobile communications industry, 5G is a new no-man's land, and 5G-Advanced is exploring in an unprecedented field, which requires the formulation of standards to be more efficient and accurate, and adapt to the future to lead the development of the global industry.
In this regard, Xu Xiaodong also said that as an operator, for the problems, bottlenecks and needs in 5G commercialization, we know where the pain points are, which are conditional to be solved, and have the responsibility and obligation to solve them, so China Mobile has made great efforts in the evolution of 5G-Advanced.
The results of the innovation technology verification released by China Mobile and Huawei verify the role of the 5GAdvanced dual-chain integration plan and the feasibility of 5G evolution and innovation direction. In this fertile land, new technologies will continue to thrive.
Fertilization: Technological breakthroughs are endless
Of course, technological innovation is a process of constantly solving business problems and has no end, if you want 5G-Advanced grass to fly and thrive, you also need to constantly fertilize and inject the kinetic energy of technological innovation. This also puts forward new requirements for China Mobile and Huawei.
The conference also gave the main direction of the next 5G evolution.
1. Continuously build a network of excellence. Create higher network performance, greater coverage capabilities, deterministic latency guarantees, etc., to better support digital services.
2. Continue to promote the wisdom of life and simplicity. Introduce ai capabilities to build 5G smart networks, ensure that 5G networks "automatically drive" in complex operating environments, reduce the difficulty of operation and maintenance, and meet the needs of the industry cost-effectively.
3. Firmly implement green and low-carbon. Through the development of green equipment, new sites, energy consumption assessment systems, etc., the full link and full cycle will reduce 5G energy consumption in an all-round way and help achieve the national double carbon goal.
In this process, China Mobile has continuously led technological innovation, injecting new impetus into the 5G industry and bringing new possibilities. With a firm pace, lead the strange long road of 5G evolution.
This is also another value of 5G-Advanced, with companionship as a confession, expressing affection with innovation, planting seeds in the years, and sowing the next vibrant spring for the world.