As the 5G era approaches, mobile bearer networks face new challenges

As 5G commercialization approaches, 5G technology has become the focus of the industry, and research on 5G bearer solutions has also been put on the agenda. How to continue to leverage the advantages of Ethernet while meeting the requirements of the 5G era is a new challenge facing the mobile bearer field.

In recent years, with the rapid development of mobile Internet and Internet of Things market and business applications, 5G technology has increasingly become the focus of the industry. At the just-concluded MWC Shanghai, 5G undoubtedly became the most eye-catching highlight of the exhibition.

As 5G commercialization approaches, 5G is no longer just a mirage in standard setting. Operators and equipment manufacturers are working hard to promote the early commercialization of 5G. From standard technology to networking and prototypes, the entire industry chain is ready for 5G commercialization.

At the same time, the research on 5G bearer solutions has also been put on the agenda and has become the focus of the industry. Since 5G needs to solve not only the connection between people, but also the connection between things and things, things and people, this puts higher requirements on 5G latency and bandwidth.

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5G bearer is equivalent to the highway of 5G end-to-end system, and is an important cornerstone that significantly affects the commercialization process of 5G. However, its industry attention is far behind that of 5G air interface. Whether the bearer can meet the network requirements will directly affect the commercialization process of 5G, which means that it puts forward higher requirements for the bearer.

For example, in the 4G era, the bandwidth requirement for each base station is 1Gbps to 10Gbps, and in the 5G era, it will reach 50Gbps or even 100Gbps, which is several to ten times higher. In terms of latency, in the future, 5G will meet the needs of industrial Internet scenarios, reducing the end-to-end latency from 20 milliseconds to 1 millisecond. This requires operators to build a more robust bearer network to meet the transmission needs of 5G.

At present, 2G/3G/4G mobile communications have profoundly changed people's lives. For the mobile broadband (such as high-definition video, virtual reality/augmented reality), high reliability and low latency (such as autonomous driving, remote control), and high connection density (such as smart cities, industrial manufacturing) described by 5G, everyone is full of longing and yearning. How to continue to give full play to the advantages of Ethernet and meet the requirements of the 5G era is a new challenge facing the mobile bearer field.

Lu Xin, vice president of Huawei's network product line, believes that for 5G bearer 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 5G new business deployments in the future; and third, creating an open 5G industry ecosystem.

With the formulation of 5G standards and the accelerated progress of testing, the construction of 5G bearer networks has reached a point where time is of the essence. In terms of standards, it is expected that the first 5G version of 3GPP, R15, will be completed in June 2018, focusing mainly on eMBB scenarios; the second version, R16, will be completed in December 2019, meeting all scenario requirements defined by ITU.

In my country, the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group has also taken the lead in formulating a pilot plan consisting of two major phases: technology R&D trial (2015-2018) and product R&D trial (2018-2020).

Currently, the Phase 1 single base station performance and network equipment tests have been carried out in Huairou, Beijing. In September this year, we will enter the next step, which will include the networking technology performance test of the 5G system and the demonstration of 5G typical services, and the cooperation of the bearer network will be required at that time.

It is not difficult to see that 5G bearer has entered the fast lane of commercialization. According to industry forecasts, since the bearer network needs to be deployed 1-2 years earlier than the wireless network, and the industry hopes that 5G will be commercialized in advance and has already applied some 5G technologies to the existing network in advance, 5G bearer needs to have the ability to be deployed commercially this year.