Liu Guangyi of China Mobile explains MEC: the "golden key" to unlock vertical industries

Thanks to the rapid deployment of the network and the large-scale popularization of smart terminals, high-traffic services such as video and games have skyrocketed, and users have higher and higher requirements for service experience. Network processing capabilities urgently need to be moved to the edge of the network to cope with the pressure of these real-time high-traffic services on the network. This is also the main reason why operators have joined hands with the industry to actively promote MEC (mobile edge computing) technology in recent years.

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As a key technology for the evolution of 5G network architecture, MEC can almost be regarded as a "key" that can meet the system's "rigid needs" for throughput, latency, network scalability and intelligence, and has attracted widespread attention in the industry in recent years. In particular, in the 4G era, when telecom operators face challenges such as increasing volume but not revenue and difficulty in adapting to the differentiated needs of vertical industries, MEC has become the "golden key" to solve the above problems.

Liu Guangyi, Chief Engineer of Wireless Institute, China Mobile Research Institute

As Liu Guangyi, chief engineer of the Wireless Institute of China Mobile Research Institute, mentioned in his speech at the "Mobile Edge Computing and Internet Summit Forum" on September 27, in response to the surge in traffic, the pressure to expand network capacity is great. After the arrival of 5G, services with even higher traffic will also explode. So how can consumers and industry users experience the high speed, high efficiency and low latency of the network anytime and anywhere, and then be willing to pay for various new applications, so that the communications industry chain can make money?

MEC is exploring the way to this end.

MEC helps operators transform the role of pipelines

It is predicted that from 2016 to 2020, the average growth rate of the entire network's business volume will reach 8 times, more than 10 times in hot spots, and more than 100 times in 2030. Such a trend will obviously lead to the expansion of network capacity for operators.

Moreover, the three major domestic operators have begun to actively expand the vertical industry market, but each industry's network demands, business characteristics, and security requirements vary greatly. It depends on 5G networks to provide different industries with different network configurations and different functions through flexible network architecture, network slicing technology, and edge computing deployment, thereby enhancing operators' vertical industry service capabilities and bringing revenue growth.

Liu Guangyi emphasized that in addition to reducing costs, another important way to solve the revenue gap of operators at this stage is to increase revenue and reduce expenditure. Smart home, Internet of Vehicles and even future autonomous driving, smart agriculture, new energy and education are all vertical markets suitable for operators to expand. Placing 5G's high speed, low latency, high reliability and other capabilities in these vertical fields can greatly increase operators' revenue opportunities.

But how to make network capabilities support new services? One is the application of network slicing technology, and the other is the application of MEC technology.

As for how to achieve it specifically, Liu Guangyi said that the deployment of mobile edge computing can allow business processing capabilities to be moved closer to the user end. On the basis of introducing local storage and computing capabilities, the network edge can also have the ability to process traffic information, and many functions of the core network can be moved to the base station side to better support new services.

In this way, new services can be as close to users as possible, and network information processing does not need to go from base stations to transmission networks and then to core networks. Transmission latency can be greatly reduced. Under the 5G architecture, the end-to-end service latency based on MEC can be reduced to about 10ms, which can basically meet most real-time transmission needs. At the same time, it also saves transmission resources for operators and can provide personalized "isolation services", making enterprise information processing more efficient and secure.

According to him, MEC network elements can also perceive the global information of the entire network and timely perceive business needs, so as to achieve better allocation of network resources and better coverage optimization.

Four major functions of MEC

Liu Guangyi focused on summarizing the advantages and capabilities of MEC in four aspects.

The first is the edge cloud platform.

The future MEC will be based on cloud architecture and can be deployed on the same platform as network elements such as CU and UPF. At the same time, some functions can be moved to the base station side to support applications with high latency requirements. "The glasses-like AR/VR applications seen in science fiction movies before will no longer be a dream with the support of MEC. I personally think that in the future, they will first be popularized in personal entertainment, education and other fields, bringing users an immersive interactive experience."

The second is the openness of capabilities that operators are most concerned about.

In order to make it easier for more innovative companies to develop new businesses, operators can open up network capabilities to third parties through standard API interfaces, making it easier for them to call on operator network capabilities to provide customized services for customers, and operators and third parties share revenue. "This may be another business model for the future development of 5G."

Third, edge gateway is another major capability of MEC.

By moving the routing function down to the edge of the base station, user data can be exchanged at the base station, greatly improving network efficiency and reducing service latency. According to Liu Guangyi, China Mobile is currently conducting experiments and verifications in this regard in its 4G network.

Fourth, MEC can help operators’ networks become more intelligent.

Through the collection and analysis of network big data, we assist in the discovery and resolution of network problems, help operators achieve network intelligence and automated operation and maintenance, greatly improve operation and maintenance efficiency, and reduce operation and maintenance costs.

"In shopping malls, with the help of MEC, we can guide the flow of people, collect consumption information, actively push discount information of various stores in the mall to consumers, and present heat maps of consumer flow. This can completely turn the mall into a smart mall, which is very convenient for merchants and consumers, and can improve the management ability and security of the entire mall."

Liu Guangyi gave an example, "For example, smart factories have high requirements for low latency, high reliability, and data security and privacy. Edge computing can be moved down to the factory's IT room, and enterprise data can be routed and exchanged locally. Data does not need to be uploaded to the public Internet and can be directly stored locally. At the same time, real-time data storage can also be more efficient. After the operator's mobile phone is fully connected to the factory, factory management can be more convenient, which will help flexible manufacturing and smart manufacturing."

At the same time, Liu Guangyi also emphasized that the location of MEC deployment is very flexible for different applications. It needs to be deployed in a targeted manner in combination with the needs of specific application cases, and functions can be dynamically configured on demand. Only in this way can the efficiency of each application be comprehensively improved and its economy be improved, thereby ensuring the quality of operators' new services while bringing better revenue prospects to operators.