How can 5G development be realized?

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[51CTO.com original article] "If you want to get rich, you must first build roads." Building a digital, intelligent and integrated infrastructure centered on 5G and unblocking the "arteries" of economic and social information is becoming a new engine for China's high-quality economic development. 5G has formed a complete new generation of information infrastructure by integrating with new generation information technologies such as the Internet of Things, data centers, artificial intelligence, and the industrial Internet. It not only enables digital industrialization and industrial digitization, but also helps modernize social governance and promote the development of a smart society. 5G has a strong industrial chain, and its applications have a strong spillover effect, and it is becoming the pillar of the digital economy.

Data from HIS shows that 5G will increase global output by $13.2 trillion by 2035, and contribute 7% to GDP. More importantly, 5G has the ability to help other industries achieve their climate goals, which is called the "enabling effect". According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) SMART 2020 report, by the end of 2020, the size of the enabling effect in all ICTs will be equivalent to 15% of all global emissions.

In 2020, my country has built a total of 718,000 5G base stations, and China already has the world's largest 5G network. 2021 is coming, and 5G development will accelerate again. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that in 2021, it will orderly promote the construction and application of 5G networks, accelerate 5G coverage in major cities, promote co-construction and sharing, and build more than 600,000 new 5G base stations; it will use 5G construction as a driving force to coordinate the deployment of data centers and computing facilities; at the same time, it will focus on 10 key industries, form 20 typical industrial application scenarios, carry out industrial 5G private network pilots, and release 5G millimeter wave frequency planning for some frequency bands in due course.

However, experts from the State Grid Energy Research Institute pointed out that in the short term, the electricity bill increase caused by 5G base stations for the three major operators is not obvious, but by 2026, after all upgrades to 5G, it will reach 2.1%, higher than the power consumption level of about 2% of data centers. Data shows and predicts that in 2019, the power consumption of 5G base stations in my country accounted for about 0.05% of the total social power consumption. By 2023, the power consumption of 5G base stations will account for 1.3% of the total social power consumption, and by 2026, the power consumption of 5G base stations will account for 2.1% of the total social power consumption.

According to internal data, the power consumption of 5G base stations of major mainstream manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE is between 3500W and 5000W, while the power consumption of 4G is only 1300W, which means that the power consumption of 5G base stations is more than three times that of 4G. Moreover, due to the high frequency, fast signal attenuation and small coverage of 5G base stations, the number of 5G base stations required to achieve the coverage of 4G base stations is about three times that of the current 4G base stations. According to the planning of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it is expected that up to 6 million 5G base stations will be built in 2025, which means that the three major operators will have to pay at least 230 billion yuan in electricity bills a year. In 2019, the profits of the three major domestic operators were only 138.4 billion yuan (China Mobile 106.6 billion yuan, China Telecom 20.5 billion yuan, China Unicom 11.3 billion yuan), which means that the profits of the three major operators are not enough to pay the electricity bills of 5G base stations.

How to solve this problem?

We might as well apply the management thinking of "flowers blooming on trees", "take advantage of the situation to deploy momentum, with small force but great momentum; when a wild goose lands on land, its feathers can be used as an example." To lead the high-quality development of 5G, we must not only take advantage of the situation to save money, promote the coordinated development of 5G+4G, intensively build green 5G, improve the efficiency of 5G networks, achieve energy saving at the three levels of equipment, sites, and networks, resolve the high power consumption of 5G base stations, and take multiple measures to reduce operators' electricity operating costs; we must also deploy open source, innovate and develop, introduce new energy, promote new consumption, accelerate new applications, cultivate new models, and build a new ecology.

First, take advantage of the situation to save money, reduce costs and increase efficiency. There are two key points for operators to save energy in 5G: one is integration, and the other is coordination. Integration refers to the integration of power supply, air conditioning and other infrastructure with the main equipment. From the scheme to the engineering design to the entire deployment, integration should also be considered. In addition, the co-construction and sharing of base stations is also an aspect of integration. Collaboration involves the concept of multi-layer coordination. The first layer is the component layer, from the coordination between input, rectification to power distribution; the second layer is the system layer, the coordination between power supply, air conditioning and other infrastructure; the third layer is the network layer, the coordination between power supply and business; the fourth layer is the business layer, through the coordination between 4G/5G networks and even 6G networks, to reduce the overall power consumption. At the same time, operators should also benchmark the advanced level of the industry, improve the process and enrich the means, finely manage green operations, and strictly control the total amount and intensity of energy consumption. In addition, the power sector can also take some improvement measures to support the development of 5G with practical actions, such as promoting the co-construction and sharing of power infrastructure, promoting the conversion of 5G base stations to direct power supply, and adopting peak and valley time-of-use electricity prices to reduce the electricity bill expenditure of 5G base stations.

Second, we should develop open source and innovate to increase revenue. The key to open source lies in market innovation. First, we should innovate the operation model, give birth to new scenarios, new products and new formats of 5G information services, and constantly lead and create demand. Second, we should promote 5G terminal consumption and accelerate user migration to 5G through package upgrade discounts and credit purchase measures. Third, we should promote applications such as 5G+VR/AR, live broadcast of events, game entertainment, and virtual shopping to promote new information consumption; strengthen collaboration and enrich new multimedia content sources such as 4K/8K, VR/AR in the fields of education, media, and entertainment.

From the perspective of the customer segments, in the TO C market, China Mobile has put forward the "Five New" services, which are noteworthy, namely new ways of seeing, listening, playing, shooting and using, to create a new experience of immersive entertainment and a new life of smart housing. In the TO B market, the focus is on accelerating the productization of 5G industry private networks, building the integrated capabilities of "private network + platform + application + terminal", and creating the six innovative capabilities of 5G - artificial intelligence as a service (AIaaS), Internet of Things as a Service (IoTaaS), cloud computing as a service (CloudaaS), big data as a service (DataaaS), edge computing as a service (MECaaS), and security as a service (SecurityaaS), so as to provide open network as a service to all walks of life.

The power of open source lies in technological innovation. New architectures, new materials, new indicators, new energy sources, and new standards should be fully taken into consideration. For example, based on the idea of ​​"increasing passive and reducing active", the array of 4G 3D-MIMO products is increased from 128 to 192, while reducing the power spectrum density and using antenna gain to compensate for the transmission power, thereby saving power. For another example, the 5G Power solution supports solar power access and is equipped with Huawei's self-developed high-efficiency solar modules, which greatly improves the light energy conversion rate and can achieve energy saving and environmental protection. In addition, the partners of the 5G ecological chain jointly formulate 5G energy efficiency evaluation standards and improve the definition and evaluation methodology of 5G energy efficiency indicators, which is also conducive to guiding the continuous improvement of 5G energy efficiency.

About the Author

Huang Yu, senior engineer of China Mobile Communications Group Changsha Branch, mainly engaged in new business management.

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