On September 28, 2021, both academia and industry in Beijing are trying to answer a question, what kind of transformation can the combination of AI and wireless communications make 5G? On September 27, the "Second Wireless Communication AI Competition", which lasted more than two months, was successfully concluded, and the wisdom of the participants took a small step forward in the integration of 5G and AI.
The competition is hosted by the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group 5G and AI Fusion Research Task Force, with the theme of "Intelligent Enlightenment Wireless AI enlightens wireless communication", and is launched for the majority of mobile communication and AI fusion research enthusiasts. Vivo and OPPO, two leading enterprises in the communication industry, together with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, opened a new format of parallel double tracks, and increased the total prize pool to 1 million.
The field of 5G+AI has become the most concerned key area in the field of mobile communications, and the introduction of AI technology into 5G wireless communication design can further develop the potential of 5G systems and improve wireless communication performance. Leading academic and industrial research and development through professional competitions has also become an unprecedented promotion model in the communication industry, sounding a new round of scientific and technological innovation.
Wang Zhiqin, vice president of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and leader of IMT-2020 (5G) promotion team, Qin Fei, president of Vivo Communication Research Institute, Yang Ning, director of OPPO Standards Research Department, and Jin Shi, vice president of Southeast University, delivered speeches at the sharing and exchange meeting and award ceremony on the 27th.
In his speech, Qin Fei put forward three major issues that must be considered and solved for the integration of 5G and AI: "First, how to ensure the extremely high reliability of AI in communication technology, AI is a black box that can learn, which can often achieve 99 points, but how to ensure 100 points Needs to be solved." Second, the gain brought by AI is to enter the specific scenarios of hundreds of problems in the communication system, but which specific scenarios are suitable for AI to solve and how to adapt to specific neuron networks need to be further clarified. Third, because communication standards have high requirements for consistency, the integration of AI and 5G, and the standardization of AI models and parameters are an insurmountable obstacle. ”
Qin Fei, president of vivo communication research institute
The competition attracted 651 teams from more than 150 universities and research institutes at home and abroad, such as China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, State Grid, ZTE, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Tsinghua University, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhejiang University, etc., and more than 130 enterprises and institutions, and finally decided on 20 award-winning teams.
At the exchange meeting, the winning teams took turns to share the ideas of the competition plan and the solution of the problem, providing creativity and implementation methods for the integration of 5G and AI, and stimulating more possibilities for mutual integration.
Representatives of 20 winning teams
The champion team of the vivo competition title "AI-based channel estimation" is the "Samsung Research China – Beijing" team from the Samsung Communication Technology Research Institute, which designed a high-level AI network to improve the level of channel estimation according to the distribution of the reference signal and the characteristics of the channel information in the competition data, and finally reached the online test effect of 43 points, ranked first, and successfully won 300,000 yuan in prize money. The two teams of "QXSLAB" and "Samsung Network, Beijing" became the second prize winners, and the three teams of "victor", "1:30 pm" and "AI_LX" won the third prize of the competition.
Qin Fei presented awards to the winning teams
Wang Zhiqin said: "The integration of wireless communication and AI has become an important direction for the future development of the industry, and it has become an important way to promote the integration of the two industries by focusing on a series of key use cases and exploring typical data sets and solutions through the competition. The results of the competition demonstrate the great potential of using AI technology to solve the classic channel information feedback and channel estimation problems of wireless communication, and provide a very good reference for subsequent standardization and industrialization. ”
The wireless communication AI competition promotes the convergence of professional talents, technologies and ideas at home and abroad, stimulates the contestants to continuously optimize the solution ideas and implementation paths in the form of competition and evaluation, accelerates the integration process of 5G and AI technology, is a successful exploration of academic, industrial research and development and competition platforms to work together and continue to move forward, and is also an attempt to jointly promote the implementation of the national scientific and technological innovation strategy and achieve economic development transformation.