2016 MWC focus on achieving 5G

The 2016 World Mobile Communications Conference (MWC) will debut in Barcelona, ​​Spain on the 22nd of this month. It is expected that the industry's discussion of the 5G mobile communication will take a big step forward from last year's standardization-related issues and become commercialized.
With telecom operators such as AT&T, Verizon in the US and Korea Telecom (KT) in South Korea actively preparing for 5G network testing, 5G cellular mobile communications are getting closer to reality. In fact, South Korea is expected to show some form of 5G network in the local winter Olympics hosted in 2018, and the official operation is in 2020, it is imminent.

"We really need to talk to industry to demonstrate the capabilities of 5G technology, and then to meet the needs of these industries and incorporate them into the standards;" Volker Held, head of innovation marketing at Nokia Networks, said: "Technical issues are almost in control. Now, we need to put them into the real environment... The biggest challenge is the ecosystem."

Peter Jarich, a senior analyst who will host two seminars on related topics at MWC, expects that commercialization will drive attention to the core network; at the same time, virtualization, network slicing and radio access networks The commitment of the road architecture is also important, and the key is to make it easy for telecom operators who are considering investing in commercial 5G networks in the short term: "It is always not easy to start a new business model; if I am a financial person who is studying related issues I need to be able to estimate the impact of a 10% cost savings on the business, but how much output the new 5G business can have is not very certain."

The success of 5G commercialization in which application markets will be successful remains to be discussed, especially since 5G networks may span from the sub-GHz band of IoT applications to the 100GHz of ultra-high-density connectivity applications in the metropolitan area. Held said key applications such as transportation infrastructure and automotive are particularly well-suited for commercialization of 5G, as these applications require large bandwidth, low latency in milliseconds, and strong links.

Nokia will showcase its 5G network-enabled autonomous vehicles at this year's MWC, but Held pointed out that the system will be presented as a toy car at the booth; the steering of the vehicle can be completely controlled via the network, with several The cloud connects to transfer data from one cloud to another while the vehicle is moving. In addition, the company will also showcase other 5G application opportunities, such as low-latency 5G networks that can remotely control interconnected robots, simultaneous broadcast of live sports events to many smart phones, and virtualized graphics that allow users to draw together in different locations. Reality experience.

Held added that today's networks require a customized management experience for different usage scenarios. In a 5G network, everything can be done automatically in defense mode, so artificial intelligence needs to be built; Jarich said that this year's MWC will be able to see the innovative application of 5G in both startups and large telecom operators, and to his surprise, the United States has performed better than expected in this regard.

More progress will be made after the standard is set.

Jarich said that in addition to the achievements in MWC, there are still many technical issues to be resolved in 5G. For example, the new air intermediaries and wireless access technology standards still need to be defined: "The empty intermediaries will be the key to our talk about 5G various things- ─ What is the low data rate technology for IoT communication applications? What is the ultra-high data rate technology required to augment reality and context communication? How to support low frequency and high frequency?"

He said that now is the initial stage of discussions on issues related to wafer technology, and I hope to hear from ARM and Intel how to use the general-purpose computing infrastructure to support the Virtual Wireless Access Network (RAN). Nokia's Held retorted: "The 5G discussion is not just about wireless technology. Our focus is on combining new wireless solutions with new architectures, which means you need to be able to control and manage every end-to-end data stream."

The discussion of 5G technology is also part of the standardization action. 3GPP has already started the 5G standard in September last year, and this year will decide the work project; the United Nations' International Telecommunications Union (ITU) sets the time for 5G standardization. Table, expect to complete the agreement by 2020.

The 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (5GPPP), which is part of the European Union, is also pushing for standardization; however, many vendors are waiting for the World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC) to reach a consensus on the use of lower frequency bands.


Distribution of communication spectrum in the United States (Source: NYU Wireless)

The 5G frequency band has not yet been decided, and vendors are concerned about the wide spectrum; for example, Nokia has demonstrated 28 GHz, 50 GHz, 60 GHz, 73 GHz and 90 GHz technologies. But Held said that it is important to investigate the complete frequency band because all frequency propagation characteristics are different and different channel modes are required; he believes that the centimeter band (3 GHz to 30 GHz) is smaller than the millimeter wave (30 GHz to 300 GHz). The band has more potential.

Both Jarchi and Held expect that the 5G test at different frequencies will eventually be approved by the WRC in 2019, while there is still a lot of work to be done; for example, telecom operators need to weigh how to invest, and which 5G features are for them. most important.