PRESS RELEASE: At China Unicom’s conference for technology innovation and practice achievements this year, Vice President of Huawei Wireless Solution Gan Bin delivered a keynote speech titled “Joint Innovation to Explore a New Journey with 5.5G”. In his speech, Gan urged the industry to continue to discuss how to build networks based on the consensus the industry has reached on the vision for 5.5G. “The ‘1+1+N’ approach will provide ubiquitous 10 Gbps experiences and 100 billion-level connectivity. Featuring an array of continuous innovations, including ultra-high bandwidth, uplink spectrum reshuffling, ELAA-Massive MIMO, green air interfaces, and native intelligence, this approach to building the networks will start a new journey with 5.5G”.

In the past year, Huawei and China Unicom have jointly put forward three new industry focuses: smart new vision, smart high uplink, and smart super sensing. They initiated integrated sensing and communication, as well as industry ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC), to advance the industry’s progress. They also explored new applications in smart manufacturing, smart grid, and smart transportation. Such efforts enabled them to lead in 5.5G growth while facilitating standard upgrades.

In April 2021, as 3GPP named 5.5G ‘5G-Advanced’, evolving 5G became a consensus in the industry. At the end of the year, the first nine focuses of 3GPP Release 18 were identified, showing that the industry has reached a consensus on the visions and directions for 5.5G. Now, while developing standards, the industry needs to further discuss how to build leading networks. In this way, the industry will be fully prepared in terms of networks, terminals, chips, and services to embrace 5.5G.

Gan Bin further shared his views about building 5.5G networks.

Spectrum is the bedrock of mobile networks. 5.5G will increase personal data of usage (DOU) by a few dozen times and require 10 Gbps experience to support holographic communication and XR PRO. To ensure a ubiquitous 10 Gbps experience, the industry needs to define new spectrum, such as the 6 GHz band, through working together to increase network spectrum resources from hundreds of MHz to GHz, upgrading high-bandwidth networks to ultra-high bandwidth ones. In addition, 5.5G must enhance uplink capabilities by fully utilizing spectrum pooling and uplink-only transmission, and rebuild spectrum usage models to ensure ubiquitous Gbps uplink.

As 5.5G moves to higher frequency bands, operators will face additional challenges in terms of coverage. With this in mind, Huawei has put forward extremely large antenna array-Massive MIMO (ELAA-MM) to ensure co-coverage between the C-band and higher bands based on extremely large antenna arrays. 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. As more and more toB applications are implemented on wireless networks, operators must further enhance and expand network capabilities. Supporting sensing and passive Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity and with improved features in positioning and URLLC, 5.5G will increase flexibility for operators to add capabilities into mobile networks on demand to bring digitalization and intelligence to industries.

“From 5G to 5.5G, the industry is further pushing the limits of mobile communication capabilities,” concluded Gan. “With scaled 5.5G rollout expected to start in 2025, Huawei is ready and keen to discuss how to build leading networks with China Unicom and other global partners. It is essential to continuously innovate mobile technologies, such as ultra-high bandwidth, uplink spectrum reshuffling, ELAA-Massive MIMO, green air interfaces, and native intelligence. China Unicom’s pioneering effort has been greatly helping these innovations in the industry looking to change society with 5G-based digital, intelligent transformation.”