Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Since the third anniversary of 5G business, with the continuous development of 5G service, new capacity requirements have been put forward for 5G network. As a "lightweight" 5G technology, RedCap continues many of the features of 5G by supporting slicing, terminal power saving, coverage enhancement, 5GLAN and other technologies, and can be introduced to different application scenarios on demand, effectively meeting the needs of 5G to B business.

In the view of industry experts, according to experience, after RedCap standardization, it will take at least 1-2 years to achieve preliminary industrialization. Recently, at a related meeting, Li Fuchang, director of the Wireless Technology Research Center of China Unicom Research Institute, predicted that the industry would launch the first generation of RedCap commercial products (including network equipment and chip modules) in March 2023, and that the RedCap industry chain would gradually mature in 2025.

The evolution of the RedCap standard promotes the commercial process RedCap (Reduced Capability), that is, "reduced capability". In the 5G R17 phase, its positioning is applied to medium-and high-speed Internet of things scenarios, including intelligent wearable devices, industrial wireless sensors and video surveillance. Because its rate is much lower than eMBB, but higher than low-power wide area networks such as NB-IoT and eMTC, it helps to improve 5G network quality and coverage when used in 5G application scenarios with low speed and delay requirements.

In June this year, 3GPP announced that the 5G R17 version was frozen, marking the official completion of the second evolved version of 5G. As the "innovation star" in the field of the Internet of things, the 5G RedCap standard continues to evolve. Facing the R18 version, RedCap will further reduce the complexity of the terminal and support medium-speed Internet of things scenarios through the 5G network.

In September this year, 3GPP released the first version of the TR38.865 technical report. The report makes it clear that the RedCap terminal type in R18 version is between R17 RedCap terminal and LPWA terminal (such as NB-IoT terminal), that is, R18 RedCap will support lower-level terminals than frozen RedCap. However, its performance is higher than that of NB-IoT, which will further expand the type of application scenarios of RedCap and reduce terminal cost and power consumption.

The standard comes first, followed by the industry. Under the guidance of the R17 standard, the industry has carried out technical verification and testing to promote the transformation of the standard to commercial use. At present, the commercial use of RedCap has begun to take shape.

The three major operators have completed the first batch of tests to verify that China Mobile joined hands with the industry to complete the first batch of 5G RedCap end-to-end laboratory tests. It is reported that the laboratory test is based on 5G low frequency (700MHz) and intermediate frequency (2.6GHz), which effectively verifies the end-to-end basic functions and service performance of RedCap. In addition, this experiment also completes the VoNR call service under 5G R17 RedCap network for the first time, which lays an important foundation for RedCap to support wearable, video surveillance, power production and other services. Recently, it is reported that Changzhou Mobile, together with ZTE and Ziguang Zhareui, have successfully completed the application test of 5G RedCap technology, and the test results such as single user peak throughput and mobility test have met expectations.

Shanghai Unicom, together with Huawei and Baidu, took the lead in completing the world's first 5G IoT RedCap serial deployment verification. It is reported that the test was conducted by Shanghai Unicom in conjunction with Huawei and Baidu Apollo. The test is based on China Unicom 5G commercial spectrum NR2.1Ghz and Shanghai Unicom's innovative dual 8TR base station, and the measured results meet the ubiquitous uplink large bandwidth requirements of RedCap in scenarios such as vehicle networking. According to reports, Shandong Unicom completed the infield key technology test of the country's first RedCap terminal access to the 5G network in Laiwu, Jinan.

Shanghai Telecom completed the first scenario verification based on 5G RedCap. It is reported that this verification is based on the mobile scenario of car connection, using the same 1T2R terminal configuration as 4G. The test results show that, compared with 4G, the breadth and depth coverage ability of RedCap can improve 7dB under the same conditions, and the uplink capacity is increased by 8 times, which can meet the uplink concurrency of multiple RedCap terminals. In the intelligent driving test network joint project incubated by Shanghai Telecom, the integration of 5G RedCap, edge computing and cloud technologies will further enable smart vehicles and smart driving tests to lead to the upgrading of the intelligent network industry.

Through the experimental verification carried out by the three major operators, we can see that the application scenario of RedCap has been extended to the field of intelligent networked vehicles, which has broken through the three scenarios originally set by 3GPP. And according to the relevant verification results carried out by Shanghai Telecom and Shanghai Unicom, RedCap meets the large bandwidth requirements of vehicle network uplink.

Terminal and chip products are still the commercial focus of RedCap related test verification, promoting the rich application scenarios of RedCap, why the terminal chip is also extremely concerned by the industry? The root cause can be traced back to the birth of RedCap-solving the cost problem of 5G terminal chips and modules. As a key part of the Internet of things, 5G terminal chips and modules are directly related to the landing of the Internet of things because of their complex design, high threshold for research and development, and huge investment costs, so the evolution direction of RedCap still needs to return to its original, launch the commercial products of the industry RedCap, and realize the "light loading" of 5G applications.

In the commercial aspect of returning to the industrial chain, not only assist operators to carry out relevant testing and verification, relevant equipment vendors, including Huawei, ZTE, China Xinke, Ericsson, Nokia Bell, etc., have also completed the testing of the key technical functions and outfield performance of 5G base stations supporting RedCap. According to previous reports, the MTNet Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Information and Communications and the IMT-2020 (5G) Propulsion Group, using Huawei's commercial base stations and chips from well-known domestic manufacturers, have completed the world's first test of the key technologies of 5G R17 RedCap base stations and chips.

In terms of chips and terminals, both the domestic Internet of things chip manufacturer Aojie Technology 5G chip platform made its debut, and after completing the RedCap key technology verification, chip-based RedCap test terminals such as Ziguang Zhanrui participated in the key technology and outfield tests, while Biebo and vivo terminal-based prototype also participated in the key technology test.

According to the "5G Application" Action Plan (2021-2023) issued by ten departments such as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it is clearly pointed out that it is necessary to speed up to make up for the weaknesses of the industry, speed up the research, development and industrialization of lightweight 5G chip modules, and further improve the performance-to-price ratio of terminal modules. Driven by the policy, the commercial process of RedCap is not only accelerated, but also radiated more widely. According to statistics, in 2022, the industry will promote the maturity of RedCap technology and product research and development. More than 10 enterprises have plans for RedCap chips, and 5 chips will participate in this year's testing.

Looking at 2023, not only in the testing phase, the industry will continue to promote the process of RedCap chip terminal products. According to industry insiders, the price of 5G module will drop by 80% to about 60 yuan in the future, which is fully ahead of 4G IoT terminal in terms of power consumption and stability.

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