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(This article is the record of the keynote speech of Academician Wu Hequan at the "IMT-2020 (5G) Conference-5G Innovation and Development Summit Forum" on October 15, 2020)
”It has been less than a year since the official launch of 5G commercialization on October 31, 2019. When it was commercialized last year, it was only one month before the 3GPP R15 SA standard was frozen. China closely followed the R15 process and launched the first batch of commercial applications in the world.
The epidemic has heated up the demand for 5G, and the country’s new infrastructure strategy has also accelerated the deployment of 5G networks. China deployed SA (independent networking) at the beginning of the commercialization of 5G, and this year fully launched SA deployment across the entire network. Up to this time, China has opened 600,000 5G base stations, and the number of 5G connections has reached 150 million, ranking first in the world. In fact, in March of this year, GSMA predicted that China will account for 70% of the global 5G connections by the end of this year. Recently, there are opinions on the Internet that "5G technology is very immature, operating costs are extremely high, and costs are not easy to digest." I want to discuss it with you.
The maturity of 5G technology is in line with the development law of the mobile communication industry
Mobile communication is basically a generation of ten years. Each generation is a mature process in the first few years, and there are many version upgrades during each generation. It can be said that the technology is constantly improving. It is obvious that it is not mature when it is first commercialized. Especially 5G.
At the time of 1G, China was 6 years behind the first international commercial use, 2G was 3 years later, 3G was 6 years later, 4G was 3 years later, and 5G was synchronized. Therefore, in the past, our previous generations started commercialization several years later in developed countries, and basically used foreign products. After 3G, there were some domestic brands, and there have been great improvements since 4G. It can be said that in the previous generations, we were less risky of trial and error, because others were ahead. However, due to late commercialization in developed countries, we not only paid the market price, but also had to bear the increased product cost due to the lagging of our own patents. The industry chain lost the opportunity to lead.
The completion of the 2G international standard was in 1987, and the commercialization was in 1991, with nearly 4 years in between. In the case of 3G, the 3GPP standard was completed in 1999, the ITU was in 2000, and the earliest commercial use was in 2001, and it took more than a year or even two years. The completion of the 4G standard and the earliest commercial use were respectively in 2009 and 2010, with a one-year interval. time. However, the commercialization of 5G is almost synchronized with international standards. So in this sense, it is obvious that 5G is not mature enough, and this is also true abroad.
5G energy efficiency is significantly better than 4G
In 2018, the three telecom operators in my country accounted for about 3% of their electricity bills, some accounted for about 4%, European countries accounted for 1.5%, developing countries accounted for 4 to 5%, and the global average was 2%. The proportion of our operators' electricity bills in revenue is higher than the global average, which was the case before 5G.
Some people say: 5G uses high frequency bands and high base station density. If you want to fully reach the current 4G coverage level, the number of 5G base stations may be 2 to 3 times that of 4G, and the energy consumption of each base station may also be 2 to 3 times that of 4G. In this way, the total energy consumption of the entire 5G base station may be 4 to 9 times that of 4G. In fact, 5G base stations will be macro stations + micro stations in the future. The number of macro stations may be the same as 4G, and the micro stations are more dense, but the energy consumption will not be three times that of 4G micro stations. In addition, WIFI is used where there is WIFI, which can save the deployment room sub-system. In general, the energy consumption of 5G should be higher than that of 4G, but it is questionable whether it is 4 to 9 times as high.
In addition, from the perspective of energy efficiency, although 5G has high energy consumption, it supports higher rates and larger capacities. For example, a 64T64R 5G base station can support 10Gbps/810W, which can be converted to an energy efficiency of 0.18W/GB, while a 4T4R 4G base station has an energy efficiency of 5W/GB, so from an energy efficiency perspective, 5G is more advantageous. Of course, we can now adopt the solution of base station sleep, because the network traffic itself has a tidal effect, and the difference between busy and idle hours may reach 4 times, so in some public places, if there is no one at night, we can intelligently shut down 5G, reducing the transmission power, can save about 13.45% every day. It is also possible not to turn off the entire base station, but to turn off only the millimeter wave frequency band, just like the ordinary frequency band below 6GHZ can also turn off part of the carrier frequency.
Of course, this kind of sleep solution requires technical support. There are many combinations of 5G base station parameters, which cannot be done by manual experience. It must be supported by adaptive AI technology. According to data analysis, the adaptive sleep solution can save 15% to 25% of base station power consumption when the coverage area remains unchanged and the service performance of the operator remains unchanged. In addition, you can change the power supply mode, such as smart boost, reduce signal line loss, and use photovoltaic power supply where conditions permit.
Regarding cooling, air conditioning is the most energy-consuming. Changing the air conditioner to liquid cooling can save 30% of electricity compared to traditional methods. Moreover, the current environmental temperature standard defined by the base station is 18~28 degrees, which takes into account the comfort of the staff in the previous base station, but now the base station is basically unattended, and there is no need to consider the comfort of people working inside. In addition, the circuit board has heat dissipation measures. I suggest raising the ambient temperature standard of the base station to save energy. In addition, equipment such as AAU (active antenna unit) on the pole can also be cooled by natural cooling.
5G investment returns are comparable to 4G
5G base stations are complex and cost more than 4G, but it is unreasonable to directly compare the price of 5G base stations for one year of commercial use with the price of 4G base stations that have been in commercial use for 7 years. During the 5G construction period, the cost of base stations will drop quickly. 5G base stations are denser than 4G, and the investment must be higher. China Merchants Securities has predicted that the total investment in infrastructure projects such as 5G base stations during the construction period may be US$165 billion, and 4G uses US$110 billion, which means that 5G base station investment is only 50% more than 4G. Our country's 4G construction has been 7 years from 2013 to the present. At present, actual users account for 80% of the mobile users of the entire network. It is estimated that it will take 8 years or even longer for 5G to reach 4G. It can be seen that the annual investment scale of 5G is not as large as imagined.
Regarding return on investment, the current ARPU of 5G users in South Korea has increased by 37% compared to 4G, which shows that 5G will exceed 4G in terms of income from consumer users. In fact, even in South Korea, 5G ultra-high-definition video, VR/AR, indoor positioning, car networking and other services have not yet been applied on a large scale. If these new services are considered, 5G consumer business revenue will be more than twice that of 4G. And in the long run, the main income of 5G will come from government and corporate customers, and its contribution will be more than three times that of consumer business. Therefore, considering the construction, operation and maintenance of macro-sites and dense micro-sites, the comprehensive cost of 5G is 4 to 5 times that of 4G, and the operating income will exceed 6 times that of 4G. It can be considered that the return on investment of 5G will be better than that of 4G, or at least equivalent, and there will be no unrecoverable investment.
5G commercial is the beginning of a new round of research and development
China has taken the lead in deploying 5G SA on a large scale in the world. Of course, there are risks of path finding and the test of product maturity and stability. Indoor coverage of 5G is also complicated, because the ability of high-frequency electromagnetic waves to penetrate walls is poor, and coverage costs are high. In-depth coverage requires a variety of coverage schemes. Indoor sub-systems need to take into account both active and passive sources. Intelligent capabilities such as networking, positioning functions, and visual operation and maintenance. Mobile communication experience shows that the network needs to be continuously optimized, the 5G frequency band is higher, and the network optimization work is more complicated, and artificial intelligence technology needs to be introduced to adapt. In addition, the previous generations of mobile communications mainly improved wireless air interface technology, while 5G has many improvements to fronthaul, metropolitan area networks, and core networks, which poses many challenges to network construction, operation and maintenance.
In addition, many capabilities of 5G need to be tightly coupled with the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, and need to be developed collaboratively. Many new formats of 5G will only be available after the network has a certain scale. To speed up this process, network capabilities need to be better opened. Of course, 5G software definition, virtualization, cloudification, and openness will introduce new security risks, so 5G commercialization should mean the beginning of a new round of technological innovation.
For the key performance of 5G, its application scenarios need to be further expanded. For example, ultra-wideband, telecommunications and China Unicom jointly build a network that can support 2.7Gbps through a 200M bandwidth. If millimeter waves are used, it can reach 20Gbps in the future. What are the applications? At present, the laser scanning parts video 5G transmission, 5G+AR glasses machine vision quality inspection, but this is far from the ultra-wideband capabilities of 5G. The low-latency, high-reliability application of 5G can achieve 0.5 milliseconds on the air interface, and the eMBB (enhanced mobile broadband) application scenario can also achieve 4 milliseconds. Now 5G VR is used to train high-speed rail drivers, and it can well adapt to the low latency requirements of industry, car networking, and UHV. In the future, it is also necessary to develop more applications that can take full advantage of the low latency characteristics of 5G.
In addition, 5G can achieve outdoor horizontal and vertical positioning with an accuracy of 10 meters to 3 meters, especially 5G indoor positioning can now achieve 3 meters, and it can be 0.3 meters in the R17 version. Indoor positioning is currently done by satellite navigation and positioning. Less than. What is the use of such positioning? Now thinking of autonomous driving, dock loading and unloading, and indoor positioning. Should there be more applications that can take advantage of the features of 5G positioning?
There is also high reliability. Now 5G can achieve reliability better than six nines (99.9999%). For remote driving and automatic parking, the requirement is five nines (99.999%), and the UHV requirement is 10-6. In fact, it has not yet been able to fully utilize the characteristics of reliability. Therefore, we look forward to digital and intelligent transformation, and the integration of informatization and industrialization to create more application scenarios.
Of course, 5G innovation requires broader cooperation in the industry chain. Terminals should now be the bottleneck for commercial use. Currently, there are not enough varieties of mobile phones to choose from. Although there are several price points close to 4G, there are still very few for less than one thousand yuan. Therefore, as users, they also hope to have further cheaper terminals. In addition, the stability and standby time of these terminals in general cannot fully meet everyone's expectations. In the future, the demand for low-end and medium-end terminals will be greater and development efforts need to be increased. The chip itself is involved here. The replacement of the chip itself is very fast, and the problems we are facing now, the lack of the foundation of chip foundry and equipment, highlights the constraints of the external ecology on our country’s 5G innovation, and the technical maturity and capabilities of the entire 5G. The solution to consumption involves the reinforcement and reconstruction of China’s industrial base.
Regarding industry terminals, it is difficult for the 5G CPE-based approach to truly exert the effects of 5G applications. More and richer industry modules and chips are needed, and middleware is used to adapt to the needs of multiple scenarios. Closer cooperation. The industry application of 5G itself is clearly personalized and requires cross-industry cooperation with vertical industries, but the current business model of such cooperation is still unclear. From the perspective of operators and the communications industry, the applications we think of are not necessarily the rigid needs of vertical industries.
5G industry innovation needs policy support, and policies and regulations are irreplaceable. The entire 5G network construction time is very long, the power consumption is relatively high, hope to get preferential electricity prices. In addition, users want to reduce traffic tariffs, and operators themselves are also under great pressure, hoping that the new infrastructure policy can help solve their difficulties. It is difficult to select the location of communication base stations, which requires the cooperation of city planning. In addition, a large number of vertical industry applications are beyond the scope of existing laws and regulations. They involve industrial safety, personal safety, artificial intelligence and in-depth data mining, which also involve business secrets and personal information security issues. Fa Kei.
Mobile communications only gave birth to new business formats after the network capabilities were available. 2G, 3G, 4G and other previous generations of mobile communications are more prominent business formats, all appeared after a period of commercial use, some are one year later, some even a few years later, such as WeChat only after 4 years of 3G commercialization in China from. Therefore, we have reason to believe that many new formats of 5G will appear in a few years, and they should be formats that we can't even imagine now. In short, the application of 5G in vertical industries will also inspire new and larger-scale new formats.
Finally, the first anniversary of 5G commercial use achieved the expected results and handed in the annual inspection answer sheet that has attracted worldwide attention. The challenges facing my country's 5G development are more severe than those of previous generations. Especially in an environment of increasing uncertainty in the international situation, 5G still needs to move forward with long-term burdens. Operators have great pressure on the return on investment of 5G, and they need to advance the deployment of 5G networks moderately and steadily, cultivate the ecology, and form a benign model of "building and promoting usage". At the same time, the 5G commercial contribution far exceeds the communication industry itself. From the perspective of long-term national interests, 5G is the new engine of the digital economy. The new infrastructure accelerates the deployment of 5G networks and opens up a larger application space. 5G has broad prospects for development, but continuous innovation is needed to achieve it.
Edit | Chen Jinglan
Proofreading | Zhong Miaoli
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