"Six-in-one", China Unicom promotes 5G-A from standard to commercial

As of February this year, the mainland has built the world's largest 5G network, with the number of base stations reaching 3.509 million, 5G mobile phone users reaching 851 million, 5G industry applications have been integrated into 71 of the 97 national economic categories, more than 94,000 application cases, and more than 29,000 5G industry virtual private networks. With the continuous maturity and improvement of 5G networks and the deepening of 5G applications, the demand for 5G in all walks of life is also increasing, and operators need to meet the growing business development needs through the continuous enhancement of 5G technology. In this context, 5G-Advanced (hereinafter referred to as 5G-A) has become a hot spot in the industry.

In April 2021, 3GPP named the technical standard for the next stage of 5G evolution as "5G-Advanced", and plans to standardize it from Rel-18, that is, the technology defined by 3GPP Rel-18 and its subsequent versions is 5G-A. The first version of the 5G-A technical standard Rel-18 was officially established in December 2021 and is expected to be frozen in the first half of 2024, and 2024 will become the first year of 5G-A standard maturity. Although 5G-A has a strict definition of standards, it is often difficult for the industry to distinguish the technical characteristics of each standard version, but to characterize the technical enhancements of 5G-A through the capability enhancement of business scenarios. In November 2022, the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group released the White Paper on 5G-Advanced Scenario Requirements and Key Technologies, which clearly proposed six application scenarios of 5G-A, including immersive real-time, intelligent uplink, industrial interconnection, integrated synaesthesia, 100 billion IoT, and space-ground integration.

Focusing on the six application scenarios of 5G-A, China Unicom adopts the "six-in-one" promotion idea, actively carries out technical research and industrial promotion, forms a comprehensive business application demonstration, and promotes 5G-A technology from standard to commercial.

Build end-to-end QoE assurance technology to ensure an immersive real-time service experience

In immersive real-time scenarios, 5G-A mainly provides end-to-end service assurance capabilities for new services such as XR (extended reality), aiming to improve the immersive service experience, realize the mobility of XR services, and promote XR services in the TOC field from indoor home entertainment (film, television, live streaming, and games) to outdoor in-vehicle XR entertainment and AR (augmented reality) navigation, etc., and promote applications such as education and training in the TOB field, and gradually move towards XR holographic conferencing and collaboration.

In order to improve the end-to-end assurance capability of XR services, China Unicom has led a number of international standards in 3GPP, from NR QoE (Quality of Experience) of Rel-17 to end-to-end QoE enhancement of Rel-18, providing a more flexible QoE reporting mechanism by supporting new service types and scenarios, adapting to changing business needs and enhancing network adaptability. Business-related immersion and presence metrics to comprehensively optimize XR services and improve user experience.

At MWC 2024, China Unicom showcased its glasses-free 3D, ultra-high-definition shallow compression, 8K large uplink live broadcast, XR separation rendering and other services completed by CCTV, among which the two sides jointly created the "world's first 5G-A ultra-high-definition shallow compression coding real-time production system", which created the world's first continuous and stable production and broadcasting record with the highest uplink bitrate in the real-time production and broadcasting process.

Promote ultra-broadband enhancement to achieve uplink gigabit and downlink 10 gigabit network capabilities

Mobile broadband capability is the most basic service capability of 5G, but unlike 2G, 3G, and 4G networks, which are all public-oriented services, 5G needs to meet the differentiated needs of thousands of industries in addition to public services. With the deepening of industry applications, their service models are also significantly different from those of to C services, and the requirements for uplink speed and capacity in the to B scenario are much greater than those for downlink, and 8 of the 9 vertical industries in the 5G Application "Sailing" Action Plan (2021-2023) have large uplink needs, and the uplink service requirements are evolving in the direction of gigabit, and operators urgently need to promote the enhancement of 5G-A intelligent uplink scenarios.

In view of the evolution of 5G to the big uplink, China Unicom has innovated the "Smart Big Uplink" technical solution, which has been comprehensively enhanced in terms of time domain, frequency domain, and airspace to achieve a leap in 5G uplink capabilities. At present, China Unicom's "Smart Enjoyment Big Uplink" solution has created the industry's highest peak uplink rate of 1.5Gbit/s for a single uplink user, realizing real-time live streaming of ultra-high-definition video from multiple Sharp 8K cameras. After testing, the scheme achieves the uplink 5Gbit/s rate under the network conditions of 300MHz bandwidth in the 3.5GHz band. In addition, China Unicom took the lead in carrying out millimeter wave technology research and program innovation in China, proposing a series of achievements such as 200MHz large bandwidth, large uplink frame structure, millimeter wave private network and hybrid networking scheme, leading 9 domestic standards, and successfully promoting the 26GHz millimeter wave frequency band, DSUUU frame structure function, and 200MHz single carrier to become the industry's "must-have".

In terms of downlink evolution, China Unicom continued to promote high, medium and low-frequency cooperative networking and carrier aggregation technology, and achieved 10 Gigabit downlink network capabilities. In February 2024, China Unicom released the country's first large-scale 5G-A networking demonstration, realizing continuous coverage in three key scenarios such as the financial street in the center of Beijing, with a peak downlink rate of 10Gbit/s for 5G-A users and a continuous experience of more than 5Gbit/s.

Innovate ultra-high reliability and low latency technology, and penetrate into the industrial production process

At present, 5G is promoting the upgrading of industrial Internet applications from auxiliary production links to core production links, and at the same time, ultra-high reliability and ultra-low latency network performance are required as the technical support for production applications. In the field of industrial control, PLC (programmable logic controller) southbound control (communication between the PLC and the equipment on the island) is a scenario with relatively high requirements for real-time and deterministic network, and it is also one of the most challenging scenarios for wireless to replace wired networks to achieve flexible production. PLC southbound wireless needs to solve huge challenges such as ultra-low network latency and ultra-high reliability, industrial protocol adaptability, and 5G terminal equipment, so overcoming the southbound flexibility of PLC in the field of industrial control is a major landmark achievement in the enhancement of 5G-A technical capabilities.

In response to the business needs and technical challenges of the southbound flexible production line of industrial Internet PLC, China Unicom proposed and promoted the 5G-A ultra-high reliability and low latency technology, and built and released the country's first "5G-A low-latency flexible production line". In terms of network, it complements TDD technology to achieve "zero waiting" for air port transmission, and introduces XSO (cross-layer scheduling collaboration) technology to realize cross-layer interaction and service collaboration between 5G-A communication protocol and industrial network protocol. In terms of terminals, we have launched field industrial equipment embedded with 5G-A ULLC (ULTRA-RELIABLE AND LOW-LATENCY COMMUNICATION) industrial modules to achieve 5G-A Inside to reduce jump latency. Through a series of technological innovations, China Unicom and Great Wall Precision Automation Technology Co., Ltd. have built the country's first 5G-A uRLLC automotive flexible production line in the industrial field, achieving ultra-high reliability performance indicators with end-to-end low latency of 4ms and 99.999% stability. At present, China Unicom's 5G-A URLLC technology solution has been replicated on a large scale in many projects such as Chongqing Chang'an and Zhejiang Jushi, and the core production processes such as cloud-based PLC and hemming lines have been continuously explored to help 5G factories go deeper and more practical.

Promote the innovation and evolution of synaesthesia integration to achieve multi-purpose networking

However, with the continuous improvement of the frequency band of communication systems, communication networks are approaching or even surpassing radar sensing in wireless sensing performance in some scenarios, and synaesthesia integration has become an important direction of 5G-A evolution, and it is also one of the six typical scenarios of 6G, with huge market development space.

Based on the principle of electromagnetic wave reflection, 5G-A synaesthesia technology uses echo time difference, Doppler effect and reflected wave beam analysis to calculate the state parameters such as distance, speed and position of moving objects, and then actively completes the range, velocity, angle and imaging of the target, so as to realize the perception service capabilities such as target monitoring, target tracking and target recognition. The 5G-A integrated synaesthesia technology can realize "one network for multiple purposes" of communication and sensing through the integrated synathesia base station, which greatly reduces the cost compared with the independent networking mode. China Unicom attaches great importance to the evolution of synaesthesia integration, and has led a number of research contents in IMT-2020 and IMT-2030 and other standards organizations, promoted the research and development of integrated synaesthesia prototype equipment, and took the lead in the industry to carry out multi-scenario business demonstrations in the fields of low-altitude economy, Internet of Vehicles, and smart mines, effectively promoting the development of integrated synaesthesia technology.

In the field of ubiquitous low-altitude economy, China Unicom carried out business demonstrations in Shenzhen Shahe Industrial Ecological Park and Nanjing Civil Unmanned Aviation Pilot Zone, through the mining of low-altitude perception data by 5G-A synaesthesia integrated base station, and jointly explored the evaluation of the flight trajectory of trainee training with the pilot training school, which improved the efficiency of education and training and incubated new business formats. In the field of intelligent vehicle networking, China Unicom took the lead in building the world's first 5G-A integrated vehicle networking pilot area in Jiading Automobile City, Shanghai, covering nearly 5km of two roads in Jiading, and the multi-station collaborative sensing delay reached the microsecond level. In the field of smart mines, China Unicom independently developed a 5G-A synaesthesia integrated base station, and cooperated with Ordos Tengyuan Coal Mine to carry out an open-pit mine scene demonstration to achieve millimeter-level mine slope deformation measurement.

Promote RedCap and passive IoT technology to create a 100 billion IoT space

Mobile IoT is an important scenario for 5G-A, and it is also a key technology for realizing 5G 100 billion connections. 5G-A mobile IoT mainly includes RedCap (lightweight) and passive Internet of Things (IoT), of which RedCap mainly meets the service requirements of medium and high-speed IoT, and passive IoT meets the service requirements of ultra-low-speed IoT.

RedCap technology reduces the bandwidth to a maximum of 20MHz through key technologies such as bandwidth clipping, reducing the number of transceiver antennas, reducing the modulation order, and saving energy of terminals, and the Rel-18 version of eRedCap further reduces the bandwidth to 5MHz, while achieving low energy consumption that the device battery can be used for 1~2 weeks. China Unicom vigorously promotes the ecological development of the RedCap industry, takes the lead in a number of international and industry standards, takes the lead in carrying out large-scale networking experiments, and creates three industry benchmarks for industrial interconnection, video surveillance, and Internet of Vehicles;

Passive IoT technology excites tag power based on mobile signals, and transmits information to the base station through backscattering and other methods, realizing 5G service capabilities from retail inventory to high-value production factor flow to wide-area logistics tracking. 5G-A passive IoT has the advantages of low cost, maintenance-free, wide application, green and low-carbon, and can support digital management such as automatic inventory and sensor data collection and reporting. China Unicom and Baowu Ou Metallurgical Services took the lead in realizing the pilot implementation of 5G-A passive IoT application in the steel coil mortgage warehouse, and launched a material digital management system based on passive IoT technology, realizing the transparent management of the whole process of steel coil warehousing and warehousing, and solving the problem of pledge movable property preservation and flow supervision. In addition, China Unicom has also joined hands with Hainan Free Trade Port to achieve end-to-end logistics tracking of duty-free goods under key supervision in logistics warehouses through 5G-A passive IoT technology and customs warehousing application platform.

Promote satellite-ground integration networking and expand network coverage

After long-term evolution, terrestrial cellular networks have completed coverage in most areas, but due to capacity and cost, they still have not achieved full coverage in scenarios such as oceans, islands, and remote areas on land. Therefore, with the evolution of 5G-A/6G networks, space-air-ground integration has become an important technical direction. The satellite-ground coordination scheme mainly cooperates the ubiquitous coverage capability of the satellite with the ground cellular network to form a three-dimensional coverage scheme of "supplementing the earth with the sky", which mainly includes two architectures: one is the terminal directly connected to the satellite communication, which can be integrated into the user's mobile phone, which has strong flexibility, and the other is that the terminal is transferred to the satellite through the relay node to achieve communication, which uses the relay node to solve the problem that the user and the satellite cannot communicate directly in some scenarios.

China Unicom will work with industry chain partners to continue to promote the innovation and development of satellite-ground integration services, jointly explore key technologies for the integration of low-orbit satellites and terrestrial communications, such as resource scheduling management, service experience assurance, sustainable operation and development, and high-performance converged communications, and unite all parties in the industry to continuously promote the improvement of NTN (non-terrestrial network) standards and the maturity of the industry.

On February 4, 2024, China Unicom Research Institute, together with ZTE, Galaxy Aerospace, Keysight Technology, and China Unicom Beijing Branch, jointly completed the first in-orbit test of NR NTN (5G broadband non-terrestrial network) low-orbit satellite led by operators, realizing the end-to-end full-process integration of NR NTN terminals directly connected to on-orbit satellite services, with an uplink peak rate of 3.6 Mbit/s and a downlink peak rate of 11 Mbit/s, which is comparable to the level of terrestrial 4G mobile networks. The experiment verifies the network architecture of the 3GPP NTN basic communication protocol, business process and transparent forwarding mode, and proves the feasibility and reliability of the space-ground integrated communication technology.

In summary, 5G-A is not a single technical feature, but a set of technologies that includes new capabilities, new scenarios, and new spectrum, covering various business scenarios such as consumer Internet, industrial Internet, mobile Internet of Things, and synaesthesia fusion. In the future, China Unicom will continue to strengthen collaboration with partners, give full play to the energy efficiency of the "two-wheel drive" of technology and application, and promote the evolution of technology and the maturity of standards with applications, and improve 5G-A business service capabilities.