With the advent of Industry 4.0, advanced technologies such as 5G, big data, and cloud computing are becoming the digital backbone of industries, industries, and infrastructure.
From it, key technologies such as 5G millimeter wave and "big data + cloud" were born.
Recently, Shengweilun Communication announced that it has completed project financing of nearly 100 million yuan. This is also the fourth strategic financing of Shengweilun Communication since its establishment 4 years ago. The total financing amount has reached hundreds of millions of yuan.
Shengweilun Communication is a wireless communication device research and development company. It is currently mainly engaged in research and development, design, production, processing and testing in the field of millimeter wave and submillimeter wave. It is a typical "specialized, special and new" enterprise.
When it comes to "specialization, specialization and innovation", it is actually not a new concept. It refers to industrial small and medium-sized enterprises with the characteristics of "specialization, refinement, specialization, and novelty". "Enterprise Growth Plan" puts forward that it is necessary to cultivate specialized and special new enterprises and support the development of small and medium-sized enterprises.
The purpose of "specialization, specialization and innovation" is also very clear, aiming at the technological blockade of foreign industries and solving technical problems such as "breakpoints" and "pain points" in many industrial chains. The deeper meaning is to promote the digital upgrading of industries and industries under the background of industry and industrial Internet. Today, "Specialized, Specialized and New" has become a synonym for a group of small and medium-sized enterprises focusing on innovative technologies in the new industrial field.
So, now that 5G, AI, big data, etc. have become a boom, why is millimeter wave favored by industrial companies? As more and more countries support the deployment of 5G millimeter waves, what room for improvement exists in the implementation of millimeter waves in the future?
Invisible "conduction" technology
If you want to talk about which fields will become popular in the era of Industry 4.0, I believe that terms such as autonomous driving, 5G, and AI will be blurted out, but behind these popular areas, there is a technology called "millimeter wave".
A millimeter wave is an electromagnetic wave with a wavelength of about 1 millimeter, more precisely, an electromagnetic wave of 1 to 10 millimeters. Because of its own wavelength and transmission characteristics, millimeter waves have faster connection rates and sub-millisecond latency, and can also support dense cell deployment, high-precision positioning, and higher device integration.
As a type of radio wave, the market and enterprises have not paid much attention to millimeter wave before, because light waves with a higher frequency than millimeter wave have a wider application field, such as digital, communication, home appliances and other fields, and higher than millimeter wave frequency. Low microwave transmission distance is longer, and it is also promising in the fields of communication and home appliances.
However, compared with microwaves and light waves, millimeter waves have extremely high bandwidth. The total usable bandwidth is as high as 135GHz, which is 5 times the bandwidth of traditional microwaves. It is very attractive in today's tight frequency band resources. That is, millimeter wave components are smaller in size and easier to miniaturize equipment;
At the same time, the requirements for weather and climate are relatively low, and the areas that can be applied are more extensive, such as my country's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Inner Mongolia Plateau and other areas with special weather changes.
With the gradual emergence of the advantages of millimeter wave, the attention of millimeter wave has gradually increased, which has also given birth to the outbreak of related markets. According to public data, in 2019, the global millimeter wave market for communications alone reached US$573 million. It is expected to usher in rapid development from 2020 to 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 37.01%.
Behind the market explosion is the continuous layout of related industrial chains. In terms of research and development, "specialized, special and new" companies such as Shengweilun Communication have been committed to the development and application of millimeter waves. At present, Shengweilun Communication has the first 1GHz~220GHz microwave test chamber in China.
In terms of terminals, it covers multiple types from mobile devices, to communication modules, to CPE products, etc., such as mobile devices of mobile phone manufacturers OnePlus, ViVo, ZTE, TCL, Huawei and other terminal manufacturers, as well as Lenovo, Mobile, etc. The modules of Telecom, Fibocom, MeiG Smart, and SIMCom all use the Snapdragon 5G modem and radio frequency system that supports 5G millimeter waves.
At present, although domestic operators have not provided millimeter wave spectrum for commercial deployment, however, millimeter wave will become the key to 5G deployment in the short term and long term, and behind this is the promotion of multiple parties.
Side B under "Specialized, Specialized and New"
Although the development potential of millimeter wave and the future market space are relatively clear, things always have two sides, and millimeter wave still faces some uncertain challenges.
At present, the data throughput of millimeter waves is still unstable, and the theoretical rate cannot be achieved in practice. This directly leads to serious signal attenuation. To put it simply, in the field of communication, the original 4G signal of mobile devices is full, but When the 5G millimeter wave is applied, the signal may be attenuated, and the 4-bar signal may only have 3 or 2 bars. This requires companies to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and the operating performance of related equipment.
In the latest 5G millimeter wave economic analysis report, it is pointed out that 5G millimeter wave will bring obvious cost optimization and gain to operators in high-density urban deployment and fixed wireless access scenarios; in high-density indoor scenarios It will also reduce the network cost per square meter, but in cities or environments with relatively low density of application scenarios, the advantages of 5G millimeter wave are not so obvious.
In addition, millimeter wave transmission has large transmission loss, poor penetration, and is susceptible to interference, which will also lead to obvious defects such as short transmission distance of millimeter wave. Originally, base stations may be built every 5 kilometers, but now they may be built every 3 kilometers or so. To build one every 2 kilometers, the deployment of 5G millimeter wave base stations is relatively more intensive, resulting in a sharp increase in the cost of station deployment.
Yang Ning, Director of OPPO's Standards Research Department, pointed out that "whether the overall deployment of millimeter wave is from the network side or the terminal side, the cost of devices and chips is still higher than that of Sub-6."
Previously, Lu Qingjun, Director of the Office of the National Telemedicine and Internet Medical Center and Director of the Development Office of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, gave a rough statistical data, which also confirmed this view to a certain extent. At present, there are more than 23,000 hospitals above the second level in the country, and less than 800 have opened 5G base stations. "There are many reasons for this, including safety, performance and cost."
As an efficient allocation of spectrum, especially the spectrum in the millimeter wave band, it is very important for high-speed, high-throughput and low-latency application scenarios. For example, large-scale industrial automation relies on millimeter waves for next-generation manufacturing, which will generate massive data. The requirement of communication is very important. If the delay is longer, it will lead to the inefficiency of robot production or data errors.
The same is true in the medical field. Lu Qingjun said, "The 5G delay is only 5 milliseconds, but the delay caused by the terminal makes the entire delay reach 256 milliseconds. This is an unacceptable delay for doctors, and the cost is very high."
In addition, the millimeter wave frequency band will affect each other between different services, which requires relevant companies or personnel to plan and coordinate mutual interference and coexistence issues between various service systems, conduct a large number of experimental studies and discuss negotiation work, and reduce conduction factors lead to efficiency problems. For the entire industry, these challenges are still the key to hindering the current adoption of mmWave.
Industrial chain reform: the "center" of the scene landing
In fact, in addition to the basic communication field, millimeter wave can also be applied to other fields, including improving user experience in the civil field and vertical industries with low latency requirements, such as industrial Internet, industrial automation, telemedicine, autonomous driving, virtual The application of millimeter wave technology in real and other fields will bring about industrial upgrading and demand experience improvement.
In the field of industrial Internet, millimeter waves can meet the needs of massive data transmission and real-time control of the industrial Internet. At present, the operation of automatic transport vehicles, remote collaborative maintenance of equipment, and the realization of innovative science popularization projects can be realized with the help of millimeter waves.
In September last year, at a 5G millimeter wave technology seminar, Liu Zhiping, a senior senior engineer at Qualcomm, shared an application case related to a smart factory, installing 15 5G millimeter wave small stations in a factory area of about 3,100 square meters. ,Provide 5G millimeter wave network coverage for the entire factory area, with the help of 5G millimeter wave to ensure ultra-high-speed data transmission and low latency of automation equipment, and realize the operation of the above three types of business.
From the current point of view, millimeter wave is indeed a trend of wireless transmission in the future, and it may only be a matter of time before it rises in China, but there is no doubt that behind the time problem, it highlights that the industrial chain has yet to be improved.
Although, GSMA mentioned in the "5G Millimeter Wave Technology White Paper" that the current 5G millimeter wave industry development ecology at home and abroad is relatively complete and has the conditions for deployment and commercialization. But as far as the actual situation is concerned, in order to accelerate the popularization of millimeter wave and realize the commercialization of more scenarios, the improvement of the industrial chain is also an inevitable process.
First of all, as a technology or a solution, millimeter wave must take into account the chip situation. Behind this is the consideration of related chip manufacturing and enterprise R&D technology. For now, there is still a certain gap between domestic millimeter-wave chip design and component development and developed countries in Europe and the United States. In China, only HiSilicon, a subsidiary of Huawei, deploys millimeter-wave chips, while foreign players have chips from Qualcomm, Samsung, and MediaTek. The top players in the field all involve millimeter wave chips.
Second, there is an abundance of inexpensive consumer device options that support this frequency band, enabling economies of scope and scale in the production and manufacture of handsets and other mobile network equipment. For any technical solution, scale and industrial chain are very important. The economies of scale brought about by the scale of the industrial chain can reduce deployment costs on a larger scale and increase the cost of equipment or solutions. overall quantity.
Finally, from the perspective of the overall development of millimeter waves in China, the allocation of spectrum resources is also very critical. From the perspective of the Asia-Pacific region and the world, 26GHz is now the most popular millimeter-wave frequency band that has been deployed and issued the most licenses. In addition, 37 to 40GHz has also been deployed or licensed in the United States and other countries and regions, which is second only to 26GHz. .
Yang Ning, Director of OPPO’s Standards Research Department, believes, “From the perspective of the entire industry, resources are the basis for development. If the allocation of resources is still unclear, the effect on promoting the industry will not be so significant, so we hope that the allocation of resources can be further clarified. "
It can be seen that with the advent of Industry 4.0, the millimeter wave as a technical support will benefit from the enthusiasm of AI, autonomous driving, 5G and other technologies, and will be more widely used in the future, but the improvement of the industrial chain And how to form a scale effect is the key to the commercialization of millimeter wave technology in the future, which also requires deeper thinking by the industry and enterprises.
Source of this article: New Industry Insights