As we all know, 2019 is called the "first year of 5G commercial use" by industry insiders. Now that more than a year has passed, 5G terminal equipment shipments have also approached the 100 million mark. However, many consumers and industry partners still have many doubts: Compared with 4G, which has been in use for many years, 5G can What are the benefits for us? What are the main bottlenecks restricting the development of 5G? How can we fully realize the true potential of 5G?
At the China Mobile Global Partner Conference held recently, Ziguang Zhanrui, together with China Mobile and other industry partners, conducted the industry's first "application demonstration of the 5G terminal slicing target solution", which aroused a strong response in the industry. Many people have seen the application demonstration of the 5G terminal slicing target solution by Ziguang Zhanrui, and they have said that many problems that have plagued them in the past have been solved immediately.
Through the interviews with Xia Xiaofei, vice president of product planning of Ziguang Zhanrui, and Wang Dahai, director of product planning of Ziguang Zhanrui, I believe that many readers and friends will also benefit a lot from it.
4G and 5G: "Big Pot Rice" and "Buffet"
"4G is like a'big pot of rice', and 5G is like a'buffet'." Speaking of the difference between 4G and 5G, Wang Dahai, product planning director of Ziguang Zhanrui, introduced to Fun Technology.
Wang Dahai pointed out that in the 4G era, users cannot independently choose the network services they want while surfing the Internet. For example, when playing games, watching videos, and making calls, the network bearer is actually the same channel. In this way, network congestion problems are very prone to occur in crowded occasions. For example, at a concert site, it often happens that calls cannot be made and photos cannot be sent, because everyone uses the same channel.
On the other hand, I believe that many consumers have had this personal experience: after get off work every day, when everyone starts to use 4G mobile phones to access the Internet, network congestion will almost certainly occur. Although when the 4G network was built, it was said how many times 4G would be faster than 3G, but in fact, the rate experience of 4G users is getting slower and slower, because more and more people use 4G, and network resources It is also limited, so on average, everyone's Internet speed experience has become lower and lower.
After entering the 5G era of high bandwidth, multiple concurrency, and low latency, what changes can it bring?
"A very vivid metaphor is the'buffet', because the network resources of 5G are to provide services to everyone according to the actual needs of users." Wang Dahai said, "5G has three major application scenarios: large bandwidth and high speed scenarios; high Reliable, low-latency scenarios; and massive large connections. The classification of network slicing corresponds to these three scenarios, which is actually service-oriented. If you want large bandwidth and high-speed services, you will give you eMBB slices; if you want high reliability, low Delayed services will give you uRLLC slices; and the 5G massive connection scenario may not appear until two years later."
Wang Dahai said that the advent of the 5G era has also spawned some new businesses, such as cloud games running in the cloud, and VR virtual reality and AR augmented reality that have been in the market for nearly a decade. Is it possible for these applications to suddenly explode in the 5G era? It is unclear at present, but it is expected that there will be "killer" applications like this in the future. When facing these different needs, Ziguang Zhanrui will also provide users with corresponding services through slicing technology.
Vertical industry demand for 5G networks
Compared with the consumer's demand for 5G network applications, the vertical industry's demand for 5G networks must be clearer.
For example, the application scenario of autonomous driving requires low latency and high reliability for 5G networks.
However, industrial control generally does not require speed, and requires highly reliable or deterministic network transmission. For example, at what time data packets must arrive, they cannot be advanced or postponed.
In addition, video surveillance applications, which are widely used during the epidemic, also have certain requirements for data uplink rates. Including the hot live shopping now, the demand for uploading is also gradually increasing.
"As for applications such as massive connections, smart parking, and smart meter reading, it may take a little longer time. We are currently exploring on the LTE network." Wang Dahai revealed.
Network slicing unleashes the true potential of 5G
"What is network slicing? Network slicing means that your network must first be deployed in the cloud. Let's take a look at the core network. The left side of the core network is the public network, which is mainly for ordinary consumers. On the right is the industry private network and industry private network. It is divided into ordinary users and users with special needs. For example, industrial control has extremely high requirements for reliability. For such requirements, the core network will be hierarchically layered. The same is true for the transmission network. The transmission network is slicing, and the wireless network is also There are corresponding technologies for slicing to provide protection. After the network slicing is done here, the rest will be handed over to the terminal." Wang Dahai introduced, "The terminal network must be coordinated. Only the network does not have the cooperation of the terminal, and the service is not. The solution finally landed. Therefore, after more than a year of experimentation in 5G SA, Chinese operators must connect applications, operating systems, and baseband chips so that the slices can be matched with the network on the terminal. This time, Ziguang The 5G terminal slicing business demonstration conducted by Zhanrui and China Mobile is to complete the end-to-end slicing of the entire terminal and the entire system."
The commercial network slicing launched by Ziguang Zhanrui has benefited the entire 5G industry.
Taking operators as an example, when Unigroup Zhanrui can provide diversified services to industry customers and consumers, operators can also achieve more diversified benefits through richer and more refined operation methods.
On the other hand, the customized service model of "pay on demand" for 5G network resources eliminates the need for consumers to pay for needs that they do not use. In fact, it also reduces the cost of use by ordinary consumers, while also providing more Customized package selection.
For users of the Internet and many other industries, after cutting out a virtual private network in the public network by slicing, customers can implement very flexible deployment, apply for services when they need them, and cancel services when they are not needed. , Which greatly saves the cost of deploying private networks.
The problems of 5G commercial landing and the three things that Ziguang Zhanrui did
Slicing technology is so important, and 5G networks are basically on the eve of commercialization, so can 5G terminals be commercialized as soon as possible? However, Ziguang Zhanrui pointed out that the commercial landing of 5G terminals still faces several major problems.
1. Difficulties in application transformation. In the traditional 4G era, when an application initiates a network connection, it does not consider whether it is connected by 4G, 5G or WiFi, that is, it does not distinguish "what kind of network do I want to use". In the 5G era, networks have changed, terminals have also changed, and applications must undergo certain transformations.
2. Difficulties with multiple terminal forms. In the 5G era, in addition to smart phones, various terminal devices such as VR, surveillance, robotics, cloud games, or gaming terminals need to be connected to the 5G network, and network slicing is required. The operating systems used by these various terminal devices are not necessarily all Android, and may include other operating systems. So how can slices land in these operating systems? This is also a difficult topic currently facing.
3. Difficulties in industrial chain cooperation. Slicing in the 5G era is not only an end-to-end industrial cooperation, but also includes customers in the Internet and vertical industries, such as operators and terminal chip manufacturers. It is possible to put the slices to the ground by doing vertical integration together.
Faced with so many problems, Ziguang Zhanrui and China Unicom jointly released the world's first 5G network slicing option in October 2020. Among them, Ziguang Zhanrui has mainly done three things:
1. Choose the modem centralization plan. Ziguang Zhanrui puts the action of slice selection between slice and network in the modem, so whether it is a smartphone with Android system, a PLC, a manipulator, or any 5G terminal in the industry, Ziguang Zhan In the modem, Rui can help various terminals and various operating systems to do slice matching.
2. For smart phones, Ziguang Zhanrui has expanded the operating system to open up the network connection between APP and operating system.
3. Ziguang Zhanrui cooperates with operators to develop "slice manager" or "slice distributor" to complete the action of networking through slices. In this way, all applications that are already in use on the market do not need to be modified anymore and can directly use network slicing technology.
"There are currently two terminal slicing solutions: one is operating system centralization; the other is modem centralization. Ziguang Zhanrui chose the latter, mainly because it believes that the application cost of rapid deployment of 5G slicing to the entire system is the smallest and avoids A large number of changes have been made to the operating system and applications. From the perspective of the entire ecology, we believe that this is the most effective solution that can quickly implement 5G slicing technology.” said Xia Xiaofei, vice president of product planning at Ziguang Zhanrui.