Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

In today's article, Xiaozao Jun would like to talk to you about 5G-A, that is, 5G-Advanced. Or 5.5 gigabytes.

Recently, you should find that there are more and more topics around 5G-A, and the attention continues to rise.

The reason is simple: 2023 is coming to an end, we are about to enter 2024, and a major event in the communications industry in 2024 is that the 3GPP R18 version is about to be frozen.

As I have told you before, 5G is actually divided into two stages: R15-R17 is the first stage and R18-R20 is the second stage.

The technology of the second stage is significantly enhanced and improved compared with the first stage, but it is not 6G, so it is called 5.5G stage.

In April 2021, 5.5G was officially named 5G-Advanced by 3GPP, and started the related standardization work. According to the plan, the R18, which is about to be frozen, will be the first official version of 5G-An and the debut of 5G-A. That is why the whole industry is so concerned.

So, will 5G-A be greeted by flowers and applause?

Frankly, not all.

As we all know, 5G has been officially commercialized in China since 2019. After four years of construction, we have built 3.215 million 5G base stations and more than 754 million 5G mobile phone users. (data as of 2023.11)

In terms of the landing of industrial applications, the achievements are also very bright. At present, there are more than 8000 domestic "5G + Industrial Internet" projects and more than 1800 5G factory projects. 5G industry applications have been integrated into 67 major categories of national economy, and the number of application cases is more than 94000.

In industry, mining, electric power, ports and other vertical industries, 5G applications continue to emerge, helping a large number of enterprises to achieve quality improvement, cost reduction and efficiency.

In spite of this, there are still some doubts about the development of 5G in society. Many people think that the investment in 5G construction is huge, but they do not seem to see the application of popular style and the rate of return is insufficient. Some people even think that 4G is enough and does not need 5G.

Against this background, we are now going to engage in 5G-A, which is even more incomprehensible.

To tell you the truth, Xiao Zaojun once had doubts about the technical research significance and commercial value of 5G.

After a long time of thinking, observation and communication, I gradually realized the necessity of developing 5G.

In recent months, I have successively participated in the inspection projects of digital construction in places such as "Digital Yunnan", contacted a large number of front-line enterprises, and communicated face-to-face with many users, thus strengthening my support for 5G.

Two days ago, I attended the World 5G Congress held in Zhengzhou. In the same period of 5G-A media salon, face-to-face communication with Wanhua Chemical Group, Haier, Great Wall Seiko, Shaanxi Coal Zhiyin Technology and other enterprises, experts from the three major operators, and industrial chain enterprises such as Dingqiao, Xiamen Sixin, Boao Automation, Zhenxiang Technology, Kunrui Electronics and Oran Technology, let me also have a new understanding of 5G-A.

Next, I'll talk to you about why you want to develop 5G-A.

The demand driven by the demand of █ users has always been the main driving force of technological development. Without demand, there is no application. No matter how advanced the technology is and no matter how high the target is, there is no way to succeed.

It is often said that 5G has no popular applications and users have no demand for 5G.

In fact, there is such a view, mainly because many people follow the thinking of consuming the Internet in the 3G / 4G era when looking at 5G.

The consumption of the Internet is actually the digitization of life. The success of 4G is due to smartphones. With the help of smartphones, people can chat, shop online, watch videos, play games, and enjoy the convenience and happiness of digital life with the help of smart phones.

5G serves both the consumer Internet and the industry Internet. On the consumer side of the Internet, there is really no demand for popular styles, so C-end users do not feel the value of 5G. Coupled with the early irrational hype, the greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment, forming a negative emotion.

For the industry Internet, its complexity far exceeds that of the consumer Internet. We often say "a thousand lines and all industries", and each industry has its own diversified work scenarios, which can not be solved simply by selling a set of hardware and software, or selling traffic like consuming the Internet.

The market cultivation cycle of the B side is far more than that of the C side. The phenomenal popular style on the C side is extremely difficult to appear on the B side.

Enterprises want to do digital, to do top-level design, to change the organizational structure, business processes, but also to customize the scene, technology selection. This process is extremely long, and it is not appropriate to measure it by the standards of consuming the Internet.

So, do corporate customers have a demand for 5G and 5G-A?

The answer is: yes.

In the past four years, the vertical industry has carried out a large number of 5G landings and found some problems, including performance deficiencies and blind spots in the scene, which drove the birth of 5G-A.

Since the beginning of this year, some enterprises have carried out the pilot project of 5G-A, and have given a preliminary evaluation of it.

Wanhua Chemical Group, headquartered in Yantai, Shandong Province, has launched more than 1000 5G equipment terminals and realized equipment remote monitoring, unmanned warehousing and logistics, as well as personnel positioning, production area safety monitoring, self-driving and other application scenarios.

They now use RedCap-based wireless cameras, saving the work of digging trenches and releasing cables required by traditional cable cameras (there are strict requirements in the construction of the chemical park, and the examination and approval process is complex), there is no loss of picture fluency and clarity, and the overall cost is reduced by more than 60%.

RedCap cameras in their production area, installation area, there are a large number of instruments, need to carry out a variety of data acquisition and real-time return. They intend to combine RedCap with instruments to accomplish these tasks.

Compared with the traditional 5G, RedCap has obvious advantages of lightweight, lower power consumption and cost. According to the data provided by experts on Shangdingqiao in the media salon, the price of the RedCap module has dropped sharply to 200 yuan, which is 100-200 yuan cheaper than the standard 5G module. In the future, the industrial chain will be more mature, the volume of shipments will increase, and the price will fall further.

In terms of power consumption, it has been reduced to about 2W, which just meets the requirements of the explosion-proof terminal of chemical products.

Hangzhou Aolang is an enterprise engaged in medical information, and they also use RedCap. In cooperation with Huawei, they use RedCap technology to build a special medical network for existing hospitals to meet the needs of data collection, video return, nursing and logistics services, saving wiring workload and cost.

In a prefecture and city in Zhejiang, the local health committee built a data collection platform, and hospitals collected and reported information. Originally, they used Wi-Fi, but the networking is too complex, and the security does not meet the requirements. After switching to RedCap, the network is very smooth, and the cost and security meet the requirements.

In addition to RedCap, let's look at an example of a 5G-A landing uRLLC scenario.

Great Wall Seiko is a wholly owned subsidiary of Great Wall Automobile. Based on the digital needs of the group, they opened the pilot verification of "5G-A + Industrial Internet", together with China Unicom, Huawei and Boao, to explore the production control core layer of the factory, introduce 5G communication, and realize the replacement of wireless to cable.

It took them two years to build a 5G ultra-reliable low-delay flexible door welding line in Baoding Seiko Automation. The traditional production site is controlled by bus. For the first time in the industry, they have replaced the current Profinet cable with 5G.

After the transformation, they solved many pain points.

First, there are a wide variety of factory equipment from different manufacturers. The agreements of different manufacturers are also different.

The network of the factory is a pyramid structure, data acquisition and industrial control are independent wiring, and the diversification of bus standards leads to the emergence of information isolated islands.

Second, there are many levels of industrial network, many cables and many faults in the field. Especially the mobile application link in production, such as the mechanical arm of the workshop, including the slide table and turntable, is the equipment related to flexible production, which will cause bus wear and failure if it runs for a long time.

If there is a failure, it will lead to line outage, resulting in losses (hundreds of thousands to millions per minute).

Troubleshooting is also difficult because I don't know if it's the device or the bus. There are several broken lines in the bus, there will be data packet loss, which is very difficult to deal with.

Third, the construction period is long and the cost is high.

Great Wall is a car company, and its models are updated very quickly. With each update, the production line will be reorganized or rebuilt. At this time, the cable network needs to be rewired, the construction period is very long, and the placement of equipment is also lack of flexibility.

Based on the above pain points, they decided to adopt 5G.

5G uRLLC industrial control demonstration according to their statistics, a single factory can reduce network failures, which is about 60 hours a year. Wireless instead of cable, the beat increases by 1 to 1.5 seconds, and the value of production capacity increases by about 800 million a year. The introduction of new models can also be 10 to 15 days in advance.

The reason for adopting 5G instead of Wi-Fi is that 5G has native features such as network hard slicing and 5G LAN, which can better protect QoS and combine with the digital system of the factory.

Let's take a look at the requirements and applications of 5G-A ultra-wideband.

The downlink of 5G-A reaches 10 gigabits (10Gbps) and the uplink reaches gigabytes (1Gbps). This is also the indicator needed in many industry scenarios.

Shaanxi Coal Intelligence Technology is an enterprise specializing in the application of underground 5G technology in coal mines. Together with China Telecom and Huawei, they launched the 5G-A mine base station in Shaanxi Coal and achieved good results. They also won the title of the annual benchmarking demonstration case of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China's 5G + Industrial Internet Conference in 2023.

Their Cao Jiaban coal mine project uses three features of 5G-An in one breath.

The first is Big Uplink and RedCap.

Now the state is promoting the wisdom mine, the mine is unmanned and dehumanized. This leads to a significant increase in the number of front-end awareness devices deployed in the actual work scenario. For underground 5G base stations, the number of devices that need to be connected to a single base station increases.

There are a large number of high-definition images underground that need to be collected and transmitted back, using RedCap. There are a large number of cameras and there is a need for a big uplink. The stronger the uplink capacity, the less the number of base stations needed, which is also conducive to reducing construction and cost investment.

It is worth mentioning that there is a large amount of gas in coal mines, which is flammable and explosive. In the past, the traditional base station went into the well, which was realized by adding explosion-proof shell, which was bulky and complicated to install. Now, the mine intrinsically safe base station they developed is small in size, meets the requirements of the specification, and is very convenient to install, which is helpful for the use of 5G-An in coal mine scenes.

The third 5G-A feature used in mine intrinsically safe base stations is synaesthesia.

There is a lot of dust in the coal mine, so it is difficult to identify objects through the camera. With the help of 5G-A synaesthesia, the road recognition rate reaches 95%, which can improve the safety of 5G underground.

5G synaesthesia is now a very popular research direction, which can be used for tracking and positioning, ranging and speed measurement, and imaging recognition.

Now many cities (such as Shenzhen) are developing a large number of low-altitude economy. Synaesthesia is very effective in the management of low-altitude UAV, which can protect the low-altitude economy.

Finally, let's take a look at P-IoT (Passive IoT), that is, passive Internet of things.

The function of P-IoT is similar to that of RFID, but based on 5G technology, the coverage is greatly increased. Traditional RFID covers a maximum of 20 meters. If it covers a large area, it will not only increase the cost, but also cause interference with each other.

The coverage of P-IoT far exceeds that of RFID, and it can interact with large networks to facilitate management and improve efficiency.

Haier introduced P-IoT into its raw material logistics management. They set up a digital base, which correlates tens of thousands of kinds of materials, and the passive interconnection ability of tags based on P-IoT not only improves the ability from positions to warehousing and suppliers, but also realizes the integration of information flow, real logistics and value flow.

They have really achieved the visualization of all-node information and brought the information ability into full play.

In the media salon, there are many enterprises that share their 5G-A landing practice. Limited to space, I will not introduce them one by one.

From these sharing, we can feel that 5G-A really provides them with a more efficient and cost-effective solution. Behind them is the strong digital transformation needs of thousands of industries, and it is a real desire.

The necessity of █ Technology Competition just now we introduced the benefits that can be brought by promoting 5G-A from the point of view of user demand.

In fact, standing at the macro level, the reason why we want to engage in 5G-An is also the need of independent research and development of science and technology and national competitiveness.

The future is the digital age, and the linkage represented by 5G and the computing power represented by AI and cloud computing are the core competitiveness of the country.

In the field of communications, we spent decades, a little bit from backward to leading, is not easy to come by. Scientific and technological research and development is like sailing against the current. If we give up 5G and 5G-A research, we will lose this competitive advantage. When it breaks out in the future, we will fall behind again.

On the other hand, the fact that we are so passive on the chip is proof.

5G, 5G-A, and 6G in the future are the only way for the development of mobile communication. Mobile communication network is a unified network, which needs not only technical inclusion (5G eMBB, RedCap, NB-IoT, etc.), but also spatial expansion and functional extension.

It is of great significance to take the lead in the world on this line and maintain its advantage.

On the other hand, by making use of the advantages of communication technology, we can also reverse infiltrate into various industries and help break the foreign monopoly of traditional industries.

All in all, firmly grasping the advantages of 5G technology will enable us to occupy an advantageous position in the future competition. This strategic value is worth taking a long-term view.

█ 's misunderstanding about 5G-A to develop 5G-A, we still need to clarify several misunderstandings.

At the World 5G Congress, Academician Wu Hequan mentioned several key points:

First of all, 5G-An is not going to completely replace 5G, so there is no investment waste that people imagine.

Second, 5G-A covers the scene and will only be built where it is needed, so the total investment is not that large.

Third, the 5G-A network side is basically achieved through software upgrades, so the difficulty of the project is not so complicated and the cost will not be so high.

These key points clarify the public's misunderstanding about the cost of 5G-A, and can dispel a lot of concerns.

The investment in communications, like high-speed rail, belongs to infrastructure investment. The benefits and returns of operators themselves are on the one hand, but more importantly, the support to enterprises and industries and the help to social development should be counted as general ledgers.

When the network is good, it will incubate more applications, bridge the digital divide, benefit individuals and enterprises, and promote the take-off of the digital economy.

█ conclusion in recent days, the domestic news about 6G has set off an upsurge. The IMT-2030 Propulsion Group of CICT has released a series of developments in 6G, which allows us to know more about 6G.

According to the plan, 6G is expected to be commercial in 2030, seven years from now. In these seven years, we need to enhance 5G through 5G-An and ask the way for 6G.

Patiently and firmly promote the landing of 5G-A, will lay a solid foundation for the future 6G.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: fresh Jujube classroom (ID:xzclasscom), author: Xiaozaojun

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