PARTNER CONTENT: At China Mobile’s achievement conference for 5G-Advanced Innovation-Industry Chain Convergence, Gan Bin, Vice President of Huawei Wireless Solution, delivered a keynote speech titled “Build the Road to 5G Evolution to Deepen Digital, Intelligent Transformation”. In his speech, Gan Bin urged, “Now that 5.5G has become a consensus, we must jointly define its characteristics, deployment strategies, and product directions based on operators’ requirements. We must also continuously innovate in ultra-high bandwidth, uplink spectrum reconstruction, ELAA-MM, green air interfaces, and native intelligence. By doing these, we can build and commercialize “1+1+N” for 5.5G on a large scale to provide ubiquitous 10 Gbps and 100 billion-level connectivity.”

Mobile communications have become an important engine to drive the growth of the digital economy and promote digital transformation and converged innovation. Connectivity is the basis for these. China has built the world’s best 5G networks, providing a key basis to upgrade user experience and digitalize industries. For innovative services to develop rapidly, networks need to be further enhanced based on 5G’s ubiquitous gigabit and 10 billion-level connectivity. By turning the triangle defined by the 5G scenario into a 5.5G hexagon, mobile networks will continue to be key in advancing our digital, intelligent transformation.

After reaching a broad consensus on both the business vision and standard specifications for 5.5G, the industry needs to define the key characteristics, deployment strategies, and product directions of 5.5G based on operator requirements as it looks to commercially launch 5.5G by 2025.

Defining the key characteristics of 5.5G networks: 5.5G will need 10 Gbps experience to support new services, such as two-way holographic communications, XR PRO, and 3D machine vision. To enable the physical world to be fully connected, sensed, and controlled to create a digital world, 5.5G networks must expand 5G’s connectivity from 10 billion-level to 100 billion-level, while bringing digitalization and intelligence to various industries.

Defining the key deployment strategies of 5.5G networks: Huawei has proposed “1+1+N” for 5.5G construction. Based on this concept, a continuous 10 Gbps experience layer will be built on top of the 5G Gbps foundation network. Moreover, new capabilities, such as sensing, passive Internet of Things (IoT), and industrial ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) will be overlaid onto the foundation network on demand to leverage 100 billion-level connections.

Defining the key directions of 5.5G products. To commercialize 5.5G by 2025, realize 5.5G’s core features, and implement the “1+1+N” concept, the industry must define the directions for 5.5G technological innovation. At the conference, Gan shared his thoughts on the key directions of 5.5G products.

First, new spectrum with ultra-high bandwidth is essential for 10 Gbps experience. To ensure ubiquitous 10 Gbps experiences, every operator requires at least GHz-level bandwidth. This requires the industry to fully use intermediate frequency resources, such as potential 6 GHz, while increasing the efficiency of incumbent spectra, such as 3 GHz, through refarming to NR.

Second, spectrum reconstruction is also crucial for ubiquitous uplink gigabit. 5.5G must continuously explore SUL, spectrum pooling, and uplink-only transmission and rebuild spectrum usage models. This will enable 5.5G to break through the bottleneck of asymmetric frequency configurations, providing support for achieving ubiquitous uplink gigabit.

Third, extremely large antenna array-Massive MIMO (ELAA-MM) is a must for continuous 10 Gbps coverage. To address the challenges of 5.5G in high-band coverage, Huawei has put forward ELAA-MM to ensure the co-coverage between C-band and higher bands. By capitalizing on channels of a greater scale, this will not only guarantee continuous 10 Gbps, but also significantly boost both capacity and experience.

The ultra-wideband multi-antenna and green air interface technologies will enable operators to take a green, low carbon path to 5.5G. IntelligentRAN will enable mobile networks to run on a new architecture built for intelligent optimization, operation and maintenance, and service operations to diversify 5.5G user experiences. This is a key direction for 5.5G products.

“Rome was not built in a day. Only innovation can lead steady, sustained progress towards a better digital world”, concluded Gan. “Huawei is willing and keen to work with China Mobile and other industry partners to define the key characteristics and deployment strategies and innovate products for 5.5G. By developing the 5.5G industry and preparing for the commercial rollout of 5.5G, we will create new value for the digital, intelligent transformation.”