5G Industry In-depth Report 1: China's main technology becomes the 5G communication coding standard

Polar code promoted by Chinese enterprises such as Huawei and ZTE has been selected as the eMBB control channel standard. In the future, the competition for standards will be launched in other application scenarios such as mMTC and uRLLC. The significance of the Polar code event is not the competition for the technology itself, but the competition for the dominance of 5G standards and industrial chain, as well as the huge patent fees behind it. According to the 3GPP plan, the first version of 5G technical standards will be determined in 2018, and full commercial use will begin in 2020. Combined with the investment clock of the wireless communication sector, 2017 is expected to usher in thematic investment opportunities for 5G. We are optimistic about the four major sectors of main equipment, optical communication/modules, RF antennas, and small base stations, and we can make layouts along these four directions in the future.

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The significance of Polar code does not lie in the dispute over the technology itself, but in the struggle for discourse power, and the essence lies in the game of huge patent fees behind it. Huawei's allies (mainly including ZTE, Xiaomi, Datang, etc.) that support Polar code will have certain first-mover advantages in patent licensing and R&D development plans in the future. Communication standards determine the right to speak in technology and the dominance of the industrial chain. my country has experienced the development path of 2G blank, 3G follow-up, and 4G synchronization in terms of communication technology standards. In the future, my country will strive to dominate 5G technology.

Polar code is the first time that a technical standard led by Chinese communications companies has become a mainstream technology, which is of milestone significance. In this enhanced mobile broadband eMBB application scenario, LDPC obtains all channels of long codes and data channels of short codes, Polar obtains control channels of short codes, and Turbo withdraws from the 5G coding standard. In the future, Polar code will also play a role in more application scenarios such as large-scale machine type communications (mMTC) and low-latency, ultra-reliable communications (uRLLC).

The development of 5G standards is expected to accelerate. According to the 3GPP plan, some component standards will be released in 2016-2017, and the 5G technical standards will be officially released in Release 15 to be announced in September 2018. Chips and hardware equipment will be available in 2019, and commercial 5G networks will be fully built in 2020. Combined with the recent progress of 5G technology experiments and application needs of all parties, the development of standards is expected to accelerate, and it is recommended to pay attention to subsequent 5G meetings.

my country's second-phase technical specifications are released, and China Mobile has clarified the 5G timetable. On November 20, the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group publicly released the "5G Technology Research and Development Test Phase II Technical Specifications", which has provided a basis for my country's 5G second-phase testing. According to China Mobile's plan, 4-5 cities will be selected in 2017 to build sites for system concept verification, the total number of cities and site scale will be expanded in 2018, and pre-commercial use will be carried out in 2019.