PARTNER CONTENT: At the GSMA 5G Futures Summit held in Shanghai, John Gao, President of 5.5G Domain of Huawei Wireless Solution, delivered a keynote speech titled ” Striving to Be the 5.5G Pioneer Together”. He explained that since related standards, terminals, network technologies, and application scenarios have already improved with the industry’s joint efforts, 5.5G is now ready for commercial deployment. As an active participant in this field, Huawei has been promoting innovations and testing on key 5.5G technologies together with world-leading operators, and has made significant progress in verification.

10 Gbps Downlink, 1 Gbps Uplink, and Deterministic Experience Drive Ubiquitous Development of Immersive Services

3D display technology of terminals is continuously improving and the overall experience is up to the comfort level, whilst the development of new technologies such as cloud and AI has further reduced the cost of 3D computing and content generation. It can be predicted that, immersive services typified by naked-eye 3D and XR will soon enter a phase of scaled growth, bolstered by the stronger capabilities of 5.5G networks, including 10 Gbps downlink, 1 Gbps uplink, and deterministic experience.

  • 10 Gbps downlink: 5.5G works with extremely large antenna array (ELAA), intelligent beam management, and intelligent inter-site coordination technologies that effectively improve mmWave and U6G coverage, making ubiquitous 10 Gbps downlink possible. Verification of these technologies has already been conducted in Beijing and Chengdu, and test results showed that the downlink rate of a single user can reach 10 Gbps. This downlink transmission is good enough to support immersive services and increase the number of concurrent users served by a single cell.
  • 1 Gbps uplink:5G leverages flexible spectrum access (FSA) to put all uplink spectrum into a single resource pool, so that terminals can select the most appropriate spectrum combination for their needs. Recent tests have found that this technology can deliver uplink transmission rates up to 1 Gbps for a single user. These are the speeds needed to migrate AI training data to the cloud and enable shallow compression and editing of HD videos. The speeds are also fast enough for interactive and immersive services like cloud photography and cloud conferencing.
  • Deterministic experience:5G uses latency-oriented intelligent slicing and multi-dimensional intelligent inter-site coordination to support a latency of less than 20 ms for 99% stability on wide-area networks. These technologies ensure the real-time performance for latency-sensitive services, such as cloud gaming, cloud rendering and transcoding, and device-pipe synergy for AI computing.

RedCap and Passive IoT Bring a New Space for 100 Billion Connections

5.5G supports new IoT technologies — RedCap and Passive IoT — which can create new revenue streams for operators and better empower industries.

RedCap effectively reduces the cost of terminals and modules, while providing positioning and URLLC capabilities for optimal price/performance ratio. In differential protection for power grids, for example, RedCap has proven to provide 80 ms low latency for 99.99% stability and 10 μs high-precision timing service. Additionally, it is projected that RedCap can create a US$1 billion industry space if it is used for security cameras, IoV terminals, and wearables.

5.5G passive IoT introduces passive tags to cellular networks for the first time in the industry. Tests show that the outdoor coverage of passive IoT can reach 235 meters, which far outperforms current RFID technology. In addition, it increases the accuracy of tag identification to 99%. The technology is expected to create a US$10 billion market space in warehousing and stocktaking, logistics, production digitalization, and consumer goods.

Low Latency and High Uplink Support Core Production Processes to Improve Efficiency

5.5G can leverage complementary TDD technology to achieve 4 ms low latency for 99.999% stability. 5.5G also provides centimeter-level positioning and 10 Gbps uplink capacity. These allow 5.5G to not only support data acquisition and remote control on production lines, but also to participate in core production processes such as PLC. Huawei has already partnered with Exquisite Automotive to build a prototype 5.5G flexible production line in China’s Hebei province where 5.5G replaces conventional cables, effectively shortening network downtime and increasing annual output by CNY800 million.

In the future, both legacy and new spectrums will evolve to 5.5G. 5.5G will help upgrade the connected people’s industry from 2D to 3D, cover all scenarios of the IoT industry, and extend industrial connectivity to core manufacturing. Gao concluded the speech by adding that 5G has basically completed large-scale construction and is about to enter its second stage. He called on the industry to work together and usher in a future where 5.5G will enable more business opportunities and better serve the society through more technologies.