PARTNER CONTENT: According to government figures, by the end of April this year, more than 2.73 million 5G base stations have been built in China, all prefecture-level cities and county towns are now covered by 5G services, and the number of 5G mobile phone users has reached 634 million. Currently, 5G has been integrated into 60 of the 97 major categories of the national economy and directly contributes a total economic output of approximately CNY3.8 trillion. Since the official issuance of 5G licenses for commercial use four years ago, 5G has benefited every aspect of society and become a key driving force for the construction of Digital China and the intelligent transformation of industries. 5G usage is now ubiquitous and ranges from the deepest mines to the summit of Mount Qomolangma. Its applications are equally diverse, ranging from smart cities to digital villages, and from fully-connected factories to unattended reaping machines.

Despite the wider coverage and faster speed of 5G, pain points in some scenarios still exist and should not be ignored. For example, it is still a challenge to provide users with a high-quality 5G experience in weak coverage scenarios, such as corridors in apartment complexes, open fields, subways and high-speed trains, open seas, and pastures. What’s more, new services and scenarios are constantly emerging, posing new requirements for network construction.

At the 2023 PT Expo China held in Beijing, Fang Kunpeng, Vice President of Huawei’s Wireless Network FDD Product Line, talked with journalists about the development trend of 5G networks in China, during which he remarked: “China is a leader in the global 5G landscape and has made remarkable achievements. 5G has helped pioneering carriers achieve significant revenue growth and a positive feedback loop in business. It is being applied to more fields where it is transforming people’s lives and modes of production through the Internet of People (IoP), Internet of Things (IoT), and Internet of Vehicles (IoV), and further helping the digital economy to develop. With IoP, 5G New Calling, cloud phones, naked-eye 3D, XR, and other new 5G applications provide immersive interactive experiences that improve the quality of people’s lives. As for IoT, by August 2022, China’s core telecom enterprises have attracted 1.698 billion mobile IoT device users, which is 20 million more than the number of mobile phone users, indicating that the era of ‘IoT surpassing IoP’ is here, and that the vision of the Internet of Everything (IoE) has come to fruition. In addition, the IoV has shifted from connected vehicles to intelligent and connected vehicles, and the size of the market is growing rapidly. However, continuous evolution of 5G applications poses higher requirements on existing 5G networks. Huawei will work with industry partners to continuously promote high-quality construction of 5G network infrastructure and support the rapid development of 5G applications and industry ecosystems. Meanwhile, the industry needs to work together to make 5.5G a viable reality. With 5.5G, a downlink rate of up to 10 Gbit/s and an uplink rate of up to 1 Gbit/s are possible, as well as 100 billion connections and native intelligence, so as to meet the new requirements of the digital economy and inject new momentum into the construction of Digital China.”

New services and scenarios require full-time and all-domain 5G

With the large-scale deployment of 5G, diversified services are booming. In addition to the further upgrade of the IoP experience, IoT and IoV applications are also being enriched rapidly. Mobile services are currently experiencing three trends as discussed below.

The first trend is that the IoP is shifting toward immersive interactive experiences that are redefining the concept of high-quality living. 5G New Calling is developing at a rapid pace, with the number of users increasing sharply, marking an enormous stride in interactive calls. 5G cloud phones enable service cloudification and device-cloud synergy, satisfying the computing power requirements of diversified applications. In addition, XR services are about to enter a rapid development phase in terms of experiences and ecosystem. Within this period, mainstream AR and VR devices will achieve large-scale commercial use and provide users with an 8K visual experience. More importantly, naked-eye 3D technology is ushering in new breakthroughs as it achieves full maturity in terms of content conversion, display, and tracking technologies, among others. The technology will allow users to experience natural and comfortable 3D without the need for heavy head-mounted devices.

The transformation of the IoP toward immersive interactive experiences poses higher requirements on network bandwidth, latency, and reliability. For example, cloud phones require a network bandwidth of 80 Mbit/s, a latency of 60 ms or lower, and a reliability rate of 95%, while Cloud VR requires a network bandwidth of 500 Mbit/s, a latency of 20 ms or lower, and a reliability rate of 99%.

The second trend is that the IoT will achieve connectivity of everything in all scenarios to build a digital foundation. Currently, China has already achieved the milestone of “IoT surpassing IoP” and will further enrich connectivity capabilities to meet connectivity requirements in various production scenarios. 5G Reduced Capability (RedCap) is a version of 5G that meets the requirements of low-cost and wide-ranging connections, making it suitable for electric power and wearable devices. It is estimated that more than 50 RedCap commercial devices will be available in 2023. With the IoT moving toward connectivity of everything in all scenarios, RedCap needs to reach an uplink rate of between 7.5 Mbit/s to 25 Mbit/s and a reliability rate of 99.9%, in order for the IoT to achieve low-cost, wide-ranging connections, as well as passive IoT, and play a key role in core production.

The third and final trend is the use of the IoV to achieve highly reliable smart transportation and accelerate the development of connected vehicles. Considering the huge number of vehicles in China, it is particularly important to achieve smart transportation through IoV technology, which will shift from vehicle-cloud synergy to vehicle-road synergy and vehicle-vehicle synergy. Through the connection capabilities of fast uplink and downlink speeds and futuristic integrated communication and sensing, the IoV will help achieve the digital sensing of real-time road information and trends, in order to reduce traffic accidents, improve transportation efficiency and management capabilities, and achieve highly reliable smart transportation.

In addition to the impact of new services on networks, the Digital China proposal also poses new scenario requirements for 5G construction.

Digital community: As a new carrier of digital economy development, the digital community connects users from all walks of life through diversified information interaction technologies, promoting the construction of Digital China. The digital community requires high-quality and premium-experience 5G networks. In residential areas with complex building structures and large numbers of users, 5G mobile networks often suffer slowdowns due to network coverage blind spots and insufficient network capacity. This is further exacerbated by the difficulty of adding new sites, since existing sites already have dense deployment.

Rural revitalization: The CPC Central Committee’s proposals for formulating the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 clearly state the requirement to “prioritize the development of agriculture and rural areas, and fully advance rural vitalization.” 5G infrastructure construction in rural areas is the foundation of rural revitalization as it enables the improvement of the intelligent agricultural production, 5G + Digital agriculture, 5G + Smart rural areas, and smart agricultural information security, facilitating the achievement of common prosperity. Currently, rural areas are sparsely populated. Therefore, it is difficult for carriers to balance network coverage and O&M costs. In addition, the distance between 5G base stations in many rural areas is large, and it is challenging to achieve continuous coverage with traditional solutions.

Smart high-speed railways and highways: According to Action 4 “Innovation in Transportation Science and Technology” of the top 10 actions proposed in the Five-year Action Plan to Accelerate China’s Transformation into a Transport Powerhouse (2023–2027), which is jointly issued by the Ministry of Transport, National Railway Administration, Civil Aviation Administration, and State Post Bureau in China, as well as China State Railway Group Co., Ltd., China needs to improve its basic system of scientific and technological innovation, enhance its national strategic technology strength and basic technologies in the transportation industry, speed up the construction of smart transportation, and optimize the innovation system for transportation technologies. The construction of smart transportation depends on high-quality 5G networking that provides excellent user experiences. It is challenging to implement continuous coverage due to the large distances between sites, complex coverage environment (which includes train tracks, tunnels, railway stations, and bridges), and large frequency offset at high speeds.

Smart ocean: China’s Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan for Ocean Economy Development stipulates that coastal provinces must vigorously develop their ocean economies and become strong maritime provinces. Each province must focus on different domains based on their attributes. These domains include marine environment governance, comprehensive utilization of ocean resources, digital industrialization and industry digitalization of marine industries (such as marine equipment and marine fishery), and marine engineering. Both the digital industrialization and industry digitalization of marine industries depend on high-quality 5G networking. For now, terrestrial networks support only basic communications in offshore areas, while remote offshore areas are covered by limited space-based network resources which are usually costly. As a result, offshore communications requirements cannot be met by using traditional solutions.

What are the additional factors that need to be considered for future network construction in the face of emerging challenges and requirements brought by new services and scenarios?

“In general, we need to keep developing high-quality 5G network infrastructure”, remarked Fang Kunpeng, “and build a low-latency infrastructure network that supports continuous coverage and wide uplink and downlink pipes in 5G application scenarios and accelerates industry ecosystem development.”

FDD 8T8R solves problems in four networking scenarios to support the development of new services

After four years of continuous efforts, China’s 5G communications service has now achieved widespread coverage. The focus of subsequent network construction is to enhance the depth of coverage and solve the problem of weak coverage. FDD 8T8R, Huawei’s next-generation base station solution, adopts leading technologies such as integrated high-gain arrays, precise beam sweeping, and high-resolution spatial-domain pairing. The solution was awarded the Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough by the GSMA Global Mobile (GLOMO) Awards, which are considered the Oscars of the mobile communications industry. Compared with traditional 4T4R base stations, FDD 8T8R base stations boast wider coverage, better user experiences, and lower power consumption, providing a more cost-effective networking solution. As the 3GPP protocols evolve from R17 to R18, high-precision coding will be added to continuously improve the capacity and user experiences of 8T8R.

According to Fang, the mid-band 8T8R solution has achieved remarkable results after being applied to real-world scenarios. Compared with traditional 5G solutions, the 2.1 GHz 8T8R solution deployed by China Telecom Shanghai Branch on a large scale in urban residential areas increased the 5G coverage rate in the residential areas from 68.6% to 91.6%, and improved the overall wireless traffic volume and 5G traffic volume by 33% and 52%, respectively, thereby shortening the payback period to 22 months. The same 8T8R solution deployed by China Telecom Anhui Branch in residential areas decreased the weak coverage rate in these areas from 62% to 16%. By combining with the 3.5 GHz dual-layer network and FDD+TDD carrier aggregation, this solution increased the coverage of the 3.5 GHz frequency band by a maximum of 8 dB. What’s more, it also improved the 5G traffic ratio and 5G traffic volume by 6% (to 54.6%) and 34.5%, respectively. In rural areas, inter-site distances tend to be large, such as China Telecom sites in the Hubei province which are space 2.7 km apart on average. In areas where the 2.1 GHz 8T8R solution was deployed, the 5G coverage area, 5G traffic ratio, 5G camping ratio, and 5G traffic volume increased by 65.8%, 10%, 20%, and 64%, respectively. As a result, the extra cost of 8T8R compared to 4T4R can be recovered within three years. In high-speed railway and highway scenarios, the 2.1 GHz 8T8R solution deployed by China Telecom Hunan Branch achieved continuous coverage between distant sites by improving the uplink cell-edge rate to over 5 Mbit/s, the average downlink user-perceived rate to 92 Mbit/s (the cell-edge rate exceeding 50 Mbit/s), the average uplink user-perceived rate by 31% (a 7-fold increase in the cell-edge user-perceived rate), and the average downlink user-perceived rate by 17% (a 53% increase in the cell-edge user-perceived rate). In addition, it improved the average coverage by about 5 dB. In ocean areas in the Fujian province, China Telecom deployed the same 8T8R solution to achieve a maximum coverage distance of 82 km. The solution greatly improved 5G network experiences of fishermen at sea, increasing the 5G traffic volume by 6.5 times and the 5G traffic ratio from 13.43% to 53.40%.

In terms of low-carbon energy saving, Huawei FDD 8T8R also provides effective solutions. Traditional solutions usually improve coverage by increasing power, which has the downside of increased energy consumption. Huawei 8T8R RRUs/AAUs use joint calibration of RF modules and half-wavelength antenna arrays, as well as innovative channel integration technologies, to enable FDD high-resolution beamforming. By enabling signals to follow people, and through the use of precise power control and full-time and all-domain power-saving scheduling algorithms, Huawei FDD 8T8R improves spectral efficiency, decreases interference, and greatly reduces power consumption. Huawei 8T8R AAUs integrate RF modules and antenna elements to reduce jumper loss, expand the antenna diameter for narrower beamforming, and further minimize operating power consumption. Compared with traditional 4T4R technologies, co-coverage in the same area requires fewer sites, resulting in lower investments in initial site construction. In addition, electricity fees can be greatly reduced within the lifecycle, which minimizes carriers’ comprehensive O&M costs and facilitates green, low-carbon transformation and high-quality development.

FDD 8T8R deployment benefits citizens and promotes industry development

In urban residential areas, FDD 8T8R ensures low latency for key services, such as online courses, Shanghai QR Code, and healthcare cloud, and provides reliable 5G network infrastructure for digital communities.

In rural areas with large inter-site distances, FDD 8T8R improves both the coverage and quality of the 5G network. It fully meets local requirements for digital transformation of agriculture, including farming, fishery, and forestry, and provides high-quality 5G network infrastructure for digitalization and economic revitalization in rural areas.

In high-speed railway and highway scenarios, FDD 8T8R provides full-area road coverage to meet the requirements of high-definition (HD) video calls and conferencing for users on high-speed trains, which accelerates the development of smart transportation and improves the transportation technology innovation system.

In terms of the ocean economy, FDD 8T8R extends network coverage in areas from offshore waters to remote oceans, meets the network experience and entertainment requirements of fish farm workers, as well as people on fishing boats and cruise ships, enriches diversified services such as maritime live streaming, video watching, and HD calls, and boosts the live commerce industry. Huawei also provides a 5G network foundation for carriers’ 2B services, including offshore wind power, remote O&M, offshore video surveillance, and unmanned ship inspection, promoting the development of the ocean economy.

As the famous Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi stated in A Happy Excursion: “If there is not sufficient depth, water will not float large ships. So with air. If there is not sufficient a depth, it cannot support large wings.” 5G development reflects China’s strength in both urban and rural areas, railways and highways, as well as offshore and remote oceanic areas, while data-AI convergence provides a foundation for Chinese people to realize their dreams.