Many hands make light work, 5G bearer will gradually enter the mature stage

It has become an industry consensus that 5G will be commercially available in 2020, and China will be one of the first countries in the world to start 5G commercialization. At present, from standards, technologies to networking and prototypes, the entire industry chain is ready for 5G commercialization.

5G networks provide users with the best experience in terms of bandwidth, latency, number of connections, etc. Compared with the single scenario of 4G, 5G supports diversified scenarios such as eMBB/mMTC/uRLLC, and the key indicators of different scenarios vary greatly. Therefore, traditional bearer networks face challenges such as architecture changes, equipment upgrades, and performance leaps. How to build an efficient and cost-effective bearer network to meet the requirements of the 5G era has become the focus of the industry.

At present, all major manufacturers pay great attention to 5G bearer and have invested huge R&D resources. For example, FiberHome officially released the FitHaul 5G bearer solution based on SDN/NFV, cloud and other technologies as early as MWCS2017, and launched a cloud-based 5G bearer architecture. FiberHome has also conducted extensive and close discussions and cooperation with leading domestic and foreign operators such as China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, as well as Telefonica and Telekom Malaysia on 5G bearer solutions and key technologies, and has formed targeted solutions based on the characteristics and demands of the operators' networks. In terms of the practice of bearer network architecture transformation, FiberHome also helped Shanghai Telecom deploy the world's largest OTN+ROADM optical-electrical hybrid cross-metropolitan POTN network. The construction of this network takes DC services as the core, builds a large-capacity, low-latency, and highly reliable metropolitan optical transmission network, and provides reference ideas for the construction of 5G bearer networks. In addition to FiberHome, Huawei, ZTE, Nokia, and Ericsson are also actively working on it.

[[199910]]

Huawei: Promoting the implementation of 5G bearer technology in all aspects

Lu Xin, vice president of Huawei's network product line, once pointed out that if 5G bearer is to truly meet the needs of 5G commercial use, efforts must be made in three aspects: first, establishing unified standards; second, continuously innovating different bearer technologies to meet the bearer requirements of various new 5G business deployments in the future; and third, creating an open 5G industry ecosystem.

At MWC2017, Huawei released a series of 5G bearer solutions, including slicing routers, microwave bearer, cloud architecture, etc. For example, in terms of architecture, Huawei introduced cloud technologies such as SDN to realize the cloud-based 5G bearer network architecture; the 5G bearer slicing routers slice resources from multiple dimensions of control, protocol, and forwarding, and based on the full range of slicing routers, end-to-end network slices can be generated for specific 5G scenario requirements; in the microwave field, Huawei launched the industry's highest throughput 20Gbit/s microwave solution for 5G bearer.

Deutsche Telekom and Huawei demonstrated an end-to-end 5G slicing network at their booth. The demonstration included the wireless network, bearer network and core network. The bearer network used the industry's first 5G bearer slicing router released by Huawei at MWC2017.

Recently, Huawei has released a mobile bearer solution for 5G. While providing a high-cost-effective, high-bandwidth, and ultra-low latency pipeline of 10us per hop based on 50GE, the solution is the first in the industry to launch hierarchical network slicing based on FlexE, and achieves on-demand connectivity and agile management and control with a cloud-based architecture, helping operators build a new mobile network business model.

"5G commercialization, bearer first", facing 5G, Huawei continues to provide users with the best network experience through continuous innovation in equipment capacity, network slicing, bearer protocols, etc. At present, Huawei is promoting the implementation and pilot of 5G bearer technology in all aspects. It has carried out preliminary research and discussions with many operators to jointly promote the technical research and standard formulation of 5G bearer and prepare for the arrival of 5G.

Ericsson: Supporting complete bearer solutions

As a long-established equipment manufacturer with a history of more than 150 years, Ericsson has industry-leading 5G products and solutions, a wide range of successful technical cases, and rich professional experience. "We actively participate in the formulation of global unified 5G standards, work with customers and partners to build a global 5G ecosystem, promote the continuous development of 5G technology, and accelerate the commercial deployment of 5G." Cai Ji, 5G bearer expert and Ericsson Northeast Asia Transmission Product Director, pointed out.

5G needs to solve not only the connection between people, but also the connection between things and things, and things and people. The network architecture has also changed in the 5G era. The CU-DU separation introduced by the 5G wireless architecture introduces the concept of mid-transmission and related requirements for the wireless bearer network. At the same time, the newly introduced massive Internet and uRLLC have completely different requirements for bearer, especially latency and network reliability, which means that the architecture of the bearer network must be able to meet the needs of different services. The sinking of mobile network content in the future, including the introduction of VR, will put forward new requirements for the flexibility of the bearer network on the access side and the aggregation side. To support the above requirements, while meeting the basic supporting technologies such as bandwidth and latency, the 5G bearer network will have higher requirements for control (the current network focuses more on management), and SDN will play an important role in improving the capabilities of the bearer network.

Cai Ji said that minimizing transmission delays, providing ultra-large capacity pipes, and flexible isolation, as well as services with highly differentiated forwarding requirements, all pose different challenges to existing technologies. 5G bearers need to change existing transmission technologies to a certain extent in order to meet the above requirements. Technologies that are closer to pure packet switching technologies will have certain advantages in terms of efficiency and global industrial chain.

In promoting the development of 5G bearer network standards, Ericsson actively participates in related activities of international standard organizations such as ITU-T and IEEE, and plays an important role in the fields of clock synchronization and low-latency fronthaul technology research. At the same time, Ericsson also supports a complete 5G bearer solution (from fronthaul, midhaul, backhaul and ultra-large capacity 10G microwave). From a development perspective, Ericsson's 5G bearer solution closely supports the needs of 5G wireless products and maintains coordination with them.

ZTE: Increase investment in 5G and bearer areas

ZTE has been closely following the many requirements of the 5G era for network bandwidth, latency, virtualization, etc., and has continued to invest in R&D resources. It has released a series of innovative solutions and new equipment in the fields of network virtualization, 5G bearer, beyond 100G optical transmission, next-generation optical access, and the Internet of Things. It has pioneered industry technological innovations many times and won industry recognition.

During MWC2017, ZTE released 5G Flexhaul, an integrated 5G fronthaul and backhaul solution, to the world. This solution combines FlexE with IP+optical architecture, realizes 5G fronthaul and backhaul on one device, provides flexible ultra-large pipeline carrying capacity, and realizes ultra-low latency and SDN-based traffic engineering. It is estimated that ZTE's 5G Flexhaul solution can reduce TCO by 30% compared with traditional solutions. In addition to ultra-large pipeline carrying capacity, the Flexhaul solution also has flexible transmission latency capabilities.

During MWCS2017, ZTE released its new 5G Flexhaul product ZXCTN 609 and conducted on-site tests of its key technology FlexE. The test results showed that the fault switching time was less than 1ms and the single-node forwarding delay was less than 0.5u seconds, which well met the ultra-high reliability and ultra-low latency requirements of 5G uRLLC services. Global Data, a well-known consulting company, spoke highly of this and believed that ZTE's new 5G Flexhaul product further consolidated its position in the emerging 5G infrastructure market.

The eye-catching 5G bearer products represent the future growth space. In the first half of 2017, ZTE's wireless, fixed network and bearer system operating income and gross profit all achieved stable growth. Yin Yimin, chairman of ZTE, emphasized at the ZTE 2016 Annual Shareholders' Meeting that ZTE will unswervingly strengthen its investment in key technologies such as 5G and bearer, and strengthen investment in important markets and customers in the future, so as to further enhance its global position in future competition. ZTE will also actively cooperate with many operators in Germany, Spain, Japan, Russia, Thailand, China and other countries in the field of fixed network and bearer network, continuously explore technology and cooperation model innovation, and help customers achieve network transformation and value enhancement on a global scale.

Nokia: 5G communication solutions attract much attention

The mature cloud computing application ecosystem is giving rise to new network requirements, which will cause fundamental changes in optical bearer networks, requiring them to meet the requirements of higher bandwidth, greater flexibility, lower latency, and faster service delivery.

As an industry leader, Nokia Bell can provide comprehensive bearer network solutions to operators and various industries with its innovative technological strength, supporting the development of various applications.

Nokia technical experts pointed out that Nokia currently leads the global over 100G market and can meet the rapid growth of network bandwidth; the unique CDC-F node architecture and optoelectronic hybrid networking solutions provide maximum network flexibility at different levels; the proposed 5G-oriented Anyhaul end-to-end mobile transmission product portfolio solution recombines products including microwave, IP, optical and fixed access solutions, and can provide optimized latency and bandwidth combinations for different scenarios of current 4G and future 5G evolution, ensuring that operators can smoothly enter the 5G era with the most comprehensive transmission network product portfolio; the first proposed IP+Optics+SDN concept can organically combine different business levels of the network, truly realize on-demand bandwidth provision, and achieve maximum flexibility.

To sum up, the 5G bearer solutions of major equipment vendors have their own strengths. With the active promotion of all parties in the industry chain, including standard organizations, research institutes, domestic and foreign operators, and equipment manufacturers (Huawei, ZTE, FiberHome, Nokia, Ericsson, etc.), 5G bearer will gradually enter a mature stage.