Huawei and China Unicom Start a New Journey with 5.5G Using "1+1+N"
[Beijing, China, May 15, 2022] At China Unicom's conference for technology innovation and practice achievements, Vice President of Huawei Wireless Solution Gan Bin delivered a keynote speech titled "Joint Innovation to Explore a New Journey with 5.5G". In his speech, Gan urged the industry to continue to discuss how to build networks based on the common industry understanding of what 5.5G will look like: "The '1+1+N' approach will provide ubiquitous 10 Gbps experiences and 100 billion-level connectivity. Featuring an array of continuous innovations, including ultra-high bandwidth, uplink spectrum reshuffling, ELAA-Massive MIMO, green air interfaces, and native intelligence, this approach to building the networks will start a new journey with 5.5G".
Gan Bin delivering a speech titled "Joint Innovation to Explore a New Journey with 5.5G"
In the past year, Huawei and China Unicom have jointly put forward three new industry focuses: smart new vision, smart high uplink, and smart super sensing. They proposed integrated sensing and communication, as well as industry ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC), to advance the industry's progress. They have also recently explored new applications in smart manufacturing, smart grids, and smart transportation to support 5.5G growth and standards development.
In April 2021, as 3GPP named the 5.5G concept '5G-Advanced' for the industry, identifying the first nine focuses of 3GPP Release 18 at the end of the year. With this clearly defined vision for 5.5G, it is now time for the industry to develop standard that can guide network construction. These standards will determine what kinds of networks, terminals, chips, and services will be needed for 5.5G.
Gan explained Huawei's stance on 5.5G network construction by focusing on spectrum and MIMO antennas.
Spectrum is the bedrock of mobile networks. 5.5G will increase personal data of usage (DOU) by a few dozen times and require 10 Gbps experience to support holographic communication and XR PRO. To ensure a ubiquitous 10 Gbps experience, the industry needs to define new spectrum, such as the 6 GHz band, by working together to increase network spectrum resources from hundreds of MHz to GHz. They also need to upgrade high-bandwidth networks to ultra-high bandwidth ones. In addition, 5.5G must enhance uplink capabilities by fully utilizing spectrum pooling and uplink-only transmission, and rebuild spectrum usage models to ensure ubiquitous Gbps uplink.
As 5.5G moves to higher frequency bands, operators will face additional challenges in terms of coverage. With this in mind, Huawei has proposed the use of extremely large antenna array-Massive MIMO (ELAA-MM) to ensure co-coverage between the C-band and higher bands. By capitalizing on channels of a greater scale, this will not only guarantee continuous 10 Gbps, but also significantly boost both capacity and experience.
The ultra-wideband multi-antenna and green air interface technologies will allow operators to take a greener low-carbon path to 5.5G. IntelligentRAN will enable mobile networks to run on a new architecture built for intelligent optimization, operation and maintenance, and service operations to diversify 5.5G user experiences. As more and more toB applications are implemented on wireless networks, operators will also have to further enhance and expand network capabilities as sensing and passive Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity and improved positioning and URLLC features. These will, in turn, need more flexible 5.5G to add on-demand network capabilities and industrial digitalization and intelligence.
Gan concluded, "From 5G to 5.5G, the industry is further pushing the limits of mobile communication capabilities. With scaled 5.5G rollout expected to start in 2025, Huawei is ready and keen to discuss how to build leading networks with China Unicom and other global partners. It is essential to continuously innovate mobile technologies, such as ultra-high bandwidth, uplink spectrum reshuffling, ELAA-Massive MIMO, green air interfaces, and native intelligence. China Unicom's pioneering effort has been greatly helping these innovations in the industry looking to change society with 5G-based digital, intelligent transformation."
