Huawei's Yang Chaobin: 5G is ON, Keep Innovating to Realize Large-Scale 5G Commercialization

[Shanghai, China, June 25, 2019] During this year's MWC Shanghai, Huawei held the 5G is ON summit with the theme of 5G deployment drives China's digital upgrade. At the summit, Yang Chaobin, Huawei 5G Product Line President, delivered a keynote speech titled 5G is ON, Keep Innovating to Realize Large-Scale 5G Commercialization.

With 5G spectrum being quickly allocated to operators around the world, 5G has started on the fast-track to commercial use. Huawei has successfully launched commercial 5G networks in a couple of countries, including South Korea, the UK, and Switzerland. With excellent network performance, Huawei's commercial 5G networks offer more than 10-times the speeds of existing 4G networks, causing user traffic to increase exponentially.

"Experience is the foundation from which 5G services will leapfrog," said Mr. Yang. "In the 5G era, we must fully utilize site resources and boost investment efficiency by building a three-layer network comprised of macro sites, pole sites, and micro sites. Our ultimate goal is to deliver Gigabit network experiences everywhere."

Yang Chaobin, Huawei 5G Product Line President

5G shares 4G macro sites to maximize value without adding new sites

2.6GHz and C band make up the foundational layer that offers 5G network coverage. In macro sites, the cost of main wireless equipment is far less than site rental and accounts for only 20% of the total site construction costs. Therefore, we can maximize investment efficiency of macro sites by expanding C band coverage and allowing 5G to share 4G macro sites, avoiding the need to add new sites.

64T64R and 32T32R antennas are similar in size to 16T16R antennas, and can be installed and deployed in the same way as 16T16R. However, the new antennas have four times the capacity and increase network coverage. This makes 64T64R and 32T32R antennas the optimal solutions for deploying 5G macro sites.

Pole sites can supplement macro sites to ensure network coverage in hot and blind spots

In densely populated areas, the demand for mobile network traffic varies, and the network experience in high-traffic areas can be affected. In residential districts and commercial areas with large populations, as well as in some scenic spots where the environment is highly protected, macro sites are hard to acquire, leaving pole sites as the major sites that can be acquired.

Pole sites are light and compact, easy to obtain power, and are adaptive to multiple scenarios. They can be quickly deployed on power poles, traffic poles, surveillance poles, or even walls, and thus become an essential supplement to macro sites to ensure network coverage in hot and blind spots.

In the 5G era, indoor digitization must go hand in hand with macro sites

Starting from the MBB era, a large amount of mobile network traffic has come from indoors, which accounts for even over 70% of the total in some cities. In crowded indoor areas such as hospitals, shopping malls, office buildings, campuses, airports, and metro station platforms, the data traffic from cells is 20 times the average traffic seen on an entire network.

As industries go digital, scenarios like smart factory, smart health, and remote education will require higher indoor bandwidth, lower latency, and more connections. This means we must develop indoor digitization in parallel with macro sites.

4T4R antennas will be the preferred choice for 5G devices. The digital indoor system (DIS) will be equipped with 4T4R antennas that can fully unleash the capacity of 5G devices. The 4T4R DIS offers a peak rate of up to 1.6 Gbps, twice or even four times that of traditional indoor distributed antennas.

The 4T4R DIS also allows 5G sites to share 4G sites, enabling 5G sites to be deployed in just one site visit, and improving the experiences of both 4G and 5G network users.

In China, indoor digitization and macro sites are being deployed simultaneously in large indoor areas, including in Beijing airport, the Shanghai Hongqiao traffic hub, the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Center, and the InterContinental Shenzhen.

Centralized baseband synergizes the three-layer network and guarantees consistent network experiences in the cell center and on the cell edge

Network capacity can be significantly expanded by deploying C band or 2.6 GHz on a three-layer network comprised of macro sites, pole sites, and micro sites. But on the edge of a multiple-layer cell, co-channel interference cannot be avoided in border areas. Under circumstances where fiber is available, centralized baseband can effectively boost ROI and create synergies between the multiple layers of a network. This helps extend network coverage, eliminate interference, and enable zero handover on the network edge.

The 5G era has arrived, and China has started a new chapter in 5G. Huawei has developed a full range of 5G solutions and continuously innovates to achieve large-scale 5G commercialization.

MWC Shanghai 2019 will be held in Shanghai, China from June 26–28, 2019. Huawei's exhibition areas include halls E10 and E70 in Hall N1 and the Innovation City zone at booth ICA01 in Hall N5 of Shanghai New International Expo Center (SNIEC). For more details, please refer to carrier.huawei.com/en/events/mwcs19.