Four major issues and three major directions: these are what you should know about 5G pre-commercial use!

At the MWC that just ended last week, 5G can be said to have become the real protagonist. As 5G commercialization is imminent, the industry's discussion on 5G commercialization has transitioned from the previous standard-setting stage to the exploration stage of actual applications.

Following this wave, at the 2018 (3rd) Global Pre-commercial 5G Industry Summit held on July 2, 2018, experts from all walks of life in the industry expressed their views on the pre-commercial use of 5G and raised four major issues that need to be urgently addressed.

Four major issues that 5G needs to solve

On June 13, the 3GPP Plenary Session (TSG#80) approved the freeze of the independent networking function of the fifth-generation mobile communication technology standard (5G NR).

This also indicates that 5G NR has the ability to be deployed independently, bringing a new end-to-end architecture, which also means that 5G can officially enter the commercial stage.

Xie Yuqi, deputy director of the Shanghai Communications Administration, said: "With the completion of the first phase of the 5G standard, the main direction of future development has also been clarified. After that, the industry will enter a new stage of full sprint."

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Fortunately, at the MWC that ended last week, the three major domestic operators announced their progress in 5G. Xie Yuqi emphasized that the arrival of 5G will bring huge industrial value, enable the development of new smart cities, and further enhance the networking and intelligence of cities.

However, even so, Jin Dongbin, director of the Communications Network Operations Professional Committee of the China Communications Enterprise Association, believes that although the global 5G development has entered a critical period of commercial deployment, there are still four major problems that need to be solved.

***, from the pre-commercialization at the end of 2018 to the beginning of 2019, to the large-scale commercialization in 2020, 5G has been much faster than the deployment speed of 3G and 4G. It can be said that there is less than two years left for 5G technology and industry, which is very tight. How to complete the dual preparation of technology and industry within this tight time is worth noting.

Second, the mobile broadband industry and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) still need to do a lot of work to ensure that 5G spectrum is allocated appropriately across countries. As 5G networks begin to be deployed in new frequency bands, spectrum allocation has become a pressing issue. At the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19) in November 2019, ITU member states are expected to agree on a 5G spectrum allocation plan in the high frequency bands to provide sufficient spectrum bandwidth in the appropriate frequency bands and conditions.

Third, chips have become the key to the development of 5G technology. Although the 5G standard is progressing very rapidly, there are still many problems with 5G-related chips. It can be said that the development of chips lags behind the system. Only the implementation of chips can guarantee the normal operation of 5G commercial use, which will also become a key factor in the development of 5G.

***, the development of 5G technology is not something that can be achieved by one or a few companies, one country or a few countries, but requires the coordinated development of the entire industry. However, from the current situation, except for some companies such as chips and operators, the participation of vertical industries is not high, and more efforts are needed.

Three innovative technical directions of 5G air interface standards

The arrival of 5G communications not only means an increase in speed, but also heralds the arrival of a new era of "Internet of Everything".

Wang Zhiqin, deputy director of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and head of the IMT2020 (5G) promotion group, said that 5G will provide at least ten times the peak rate, transmission latency and connectivity of 4G with a new network architecture, ushering in a new era of the Internet of Everything and human-computer interaction, and becoming a key booster for the digital transformation of the economy and society.

However, at the same time, 5G will also bring greater challenges. We need to think about how to meet the diverse needs of the Internet of Things under the conditions of 5G.

It should be noted that the 5G new air interface includes low-frequency band and high-frequency band, which are incompatible with 4G. The high and low frequency bands use a unified air interface technology solution. Among them, the 5G low-frequency new air interface meets most 5G scenarios, while the 5G high-frequency new air interface serves as a supplement.

In Wang Zhiqin's view, the 5G core network architecture has the following characteristics: it supports network slicing based on network functions; distributed data forwarding supports flexible diversion; the user plane is sunk to the edge of the network, even near the base station, to support edge computing; the control plane business process is based on HTTP service-to-service calls, adopting the design concept of a service-based network architecture.

At present, 5G has entered a critical stage in the development of international standards. How to meet the needs of diverse scenarios through a unified, flexible and configurable air interface technology framework and use large-scale antennas and new technologies to improve system performance is a key issue.

***, Wang Zhiqin pointed out the three major innovative technical directions of 5G air interface standards: flexible system design, new air interface technology, and large-scale antennas.

Mei Chengli, network technology director of China Telecom Innovation Center, believes that under this background, it is necessary to clarify the development direction of 5G business.

As mentioned before, China's development speed from 3G, 4G to 5G has broken the normal international development pattern of "one generation in ten years" and presented China's unique "two generations in ten years" development model.

This development model brings China huge opportunities and challenges in new spectrum, new air interface, new network, new business and new ecology.

Mei Chengli emphasized that the future development of 5G networks and services should be divided into three stages:

*** stage: mainly focusing on applications such as mobile video to meet the demand for large bandwidth.

The second stage: using industrial Internet and Internet of Vehicles applications to meet the needs of low latency and large bandwidth.

The third stage: realize the intelligence and scale of each application.

As 5G commercialization draws closer, the entire industry will face huge development opportunities, but also many uncertainties.

However, as an inevitable technology in the era of "Internet of Everything", 5G represents not only technological change, but also new opportunities for industrial integration, cross-border expansion and ecological reconstruction!