In the critical stage of the prosperity and development of the Internet of Things and the advancement of the Internet of Intelligence, higher requirements have been put forward for both "connection" and "computing". As an important middleware, the module not only needs to introduce the old and bring forth the new according to the intergenerational change of communication, but also needs to continue to upgrade to a more intelligent direction, becoming the carrier of the organic combination of AI and the Internet of Things, so that the Internet of Things devices have stronger intelligent processing ability.
The concept of the Internet of Things can be traced back to 1999. At that time, some experts predicted that "the sensor network will be another development opportunity for mankind in the next century." And indeed, over the years, the scope of the Internet of Things has continued to expand, triggering milestone changes in more and more industries. To some extent, the Internet of Things actually grew up on the soil of the Internet. From PC to mobile Internet to mobile Internet of Things, every leap is accompanied by a surge in the number of connected devices. Nowadays, all kinds of Internet of Things devices have been integrated into every corner of people's life and work silently, and are constantly fused with innovative technologies to create new sparks.
Since entering 2023, China's Internet of Things market has once again burst into new vitality driven by two forces. One is to vigorously promote the construction of digital China at the national level. As the "water, electricity and coal" of the digital economy era, the connectivity of mobile Internet of Things is bound to continue to grow. In addition, the domestic economy has ushered in a good momentum of development, prompting the consumer market to pick up, and the growth of the digital economy is accumulating At the same time, the supply capacity of the industrial chain has been further guaranteed. The second is that the wave of generative AI set off by ChatGPT has swept across all walks of life. Multi-modal large models have begun to integrate with more and more digital scenarios. The deep integration of AI and IoT has provided new ideas for the digital transformation of the industry, and also made the industry The importance of computing is more clearly recognized.
Undoubtedly, at the critical stage of the prosperity and development of the Internet of Things and its march towards the Internet of Intelligence, higher requirements are put forward for both "connection" and "computing". Looking at the entire Internet of Things industry chain, modules, as important middleware, undertake chip manufacturers upwards, give play to their product performance advantages while improving integration to promote industrial applications; downward docking fragmented intelligent scenarios, covering thousands of industries differentiated needs. Especially at the time of rapid development of 5G and AI, module products not only need to follow the intergenerational change of communication and introduce new ones, but also need to continue to upgrade to a more intelligent direction, becoming the carrier of the organic combination of AI and the Internet of Things, so that the Internet of Things devices have Stronger intelligent processing capability.
As a leading enterprise of cellular IoT modules, Quectel has been leading the global market in terms of market share for many years. At the Quectel IoT Ecological Conference held on April 12 with the theme of "Intelligent Connection of All Things, Counting the Future", Zhang Dong, COO of Quectel, once again demonstrated its strong technical capabilities and rich product categories to the industry. At the same time, the conference also focused on themes such as the Internet of Things, Internet of Vehicles, cloud services, and 5G AIoT. Together with industry partners, three sub-forums were held in the afternoon to share forward-looking insights and the latest technology trends.
5G Internet of Things leads to new opportunities for development
The intergenerational evolution of communication has always been an important driving force for the upgrading of intelligent scenarios. Since the commercialization of 5G, we can clearly feel the transformative significance of its high speed, large bandwidth, and low latency for industrial digital transformation, which is difficult to present in many 4G eras. The application effect is gradually improving.
According to Liu Hong, technical general manager of GSMA Greater China, at the Quectel Internet of Things Ecological Conference, as of January 2023, 229 operators in 87 countries and regions around the world have deployed 5G mobile networks, and another 95 operators 5G FWA network deployed. In addition, by the end of 2022, the global 5G connection has exceeded the 1 billion mark. More importantly, it took less than 4 years for 5G to complete this milestone, far shorter than the nearly 8 years of 4G and the nearly 11 years of 3G. At the same time, according to GSMA's forecast, the number of 5G connections in China will exceed 4G by 2024 at the latest, a trend that is expected to be more than four years faster than the global average; and by 2025, China may become the first country with more than 4G 1 billion market.
Obviously, the rapid progress of 5G has also built a "fast track" for the high-quality development of the cellular Internet of Things. On the one hand, the Internet of Things is a key enabling technology for 5G industry applications. Based on Internet of Things terminals, 5G capabilities are penetrating into the entire process of various industries; on the other hand, 5G networks have also become the Delay-sensitive intelligent scenarios such as networking, industry, and virtual reality can achieve more secure and reliable communication connections.
4G changes life, and 5G changes society. From a certain point of view, the historical mission of 5G is to move from toC to toB and empower the digital transformation of thousands of industries. In this process, 5G itself is also constantly "learning" its capabilities.
According to 3GPP's 5G evolution and standardization process, the first thing worth paying attention to is 5G FWA, which is booming in overseas markets. It is considered to be the 5G application field with the highest demand certainty and growth besides mobile phones. FWA uses electromagnetic waves instead of cables as the medium of signal transmission, thereby avoiding the cumbersome process of trenching and wiring required for traditional fiber access. In addition to the natural advantages of 5G in terms of bandwidth, speed and stability, it can provide users with comparable Gigabit optical fiber network experience. In recent years, the demand for high-speed and stable communications has surged on the market side. In areas where fixed broadband penetration is insufficient, as well as in small and micro enterprises, shops and other places, 5G FWA has great potential.
In view of this, Quectel launched the 5G module RG620T equipped with MediaTek T830. The RG620T integrated with high 5G speed and high concurrency of Wi-Fi 7 can also help customers expand cutting-edge application scenarios such as XR and cloud live broadcasting. According to Zhang Dong, Quectel can provide customized frequency bands and function combinations according to the needs of global operators. Quectel's early insight and long-term investment have also established a first-mover advantage in the high-growth market of 5G FWA. At present, Quectel occupies a leading position in the global 5G FWA market.
The second thing to pay attention to is RedCap, which complements the middle ground of 5G network capabilities, which introduces the ability of medium and high-speed Internet of Things to a 5G network. At present, RedCap's technical capabilities under the current conditions are superior to 4G Cat 4, coupled with the advantages of 5G one network to realize all IoT, in the foreseeable future, RedCap is bound to replace 4G IoT.
In other words, there is no need to repeat the huge development space hidden behind it. As Zhang Dong said, as a lightweight 5G technology, while achieving low cost, low power consumption, and small size, RedCap can also support various features of 5G, such as 5G LAN, low-latency and highly reliable communication, and network slicing. wait. At the same time, RedCap adapts to medium-speed IoT application scenarios with more precise performance, such as industrial gateways, sensing devices, intelligent security, etc., which is an important step on the road to 5G large-scale commercial use.
Since the 5G R17 standard was frozen in June 2022, the industry has been intensively promoting the commercialization of 5G RedCap, and module products are naturally an important part of it. As an industry pioneer, Quectel launched the lightweight 5G RedCap module Rx255C series in February this year. This series of new products includes two versions, RG255C and RM255C, which have superior wireless connection and ultra-high reliability low-latency communication (URLLC) capabilities. At the same time, the size, power consumption and cost-effectiveness of the product have also been greatly optimized.
Throughout the evolution of 5G R15 to R18, it supports a wider range of scenarios for IoT applications and more comprehensive connection capabilities. Especially after the commercialization of RedCap, the cellular IoT is bound to further move towards 5G one network. At that time, Quectel's accumulated technical capabilities, product experience, and mature and rich 5G module product line will also become its sharp edge in the 5G digital economy era.
On the same day, at the roundtable discussion on the main forum, several senior practitioners from the front line of the Internet of Things also discussed the topic of 5G RedCap. Everyone has great expectations for RedCap, but at the same time they all believe that it is facing great technical and market challenges. As Xu Dayong, Senior Vice President of Quectel, mentioned, the important issues that RedCap needs to consider in the future include three aspects: user side, network construction side and cost side, and this requires the efforts of all partners in the upstream and downstream of the industry chain.
Smart Modules Blooming
When it comes to artificial intelligence, under the cool effects it shows, people will always be the first to consider pragmatically how to implement it and how to empower the industry. In recent years, with the massive growth of IoT connections, "thing data" has become an important part of data elements. The scale of IoT data is also reflected in the growing number of IoT devices. According to statistics, by 2025, more than 150,000 IoT devices will be connected to the Internet every minute around the world. Massive Internet of Things connections, and the amount of data generated in the future may exceed the prospect of the Internet, which undoubtedly provides a good breeding ground for AI applications that require data feeding.
On the other hand, the combination of AI and the Internet of Things also makes IoT terminals more intelligent, able to process more data and cope with more differentiated and complex environments. As Zhang Dong said, the intelligent connection of the Internet of Things requires both connection and intelligence. And this also means that module products need to be the first to inject intelligence factors. According to Zhang Dong, Quectel's smart module product line provides more than 20 products in different series such as 4G, 5G, and AI computing power. At the same time, it has a variety of built-in algorithms for different industries, such as the quick start function suitable for vehicle applications, the dynamic resolution switching function suitable for large-screen applications, and the object recognition function suitable for AI deep learning applications.
In the speech sharing of Quectel's Internet of Things Ecological Conference, Yang Zhongzhi, Senior Vice President of Quectel, introduced the practical application of AI-enabled modules through the case of module shielding covers. In the process of module production, products are easily affected by the external environment and cause dirt, damage, etc. Quality inspection is an important step. In the past, the quality inspection process mainly relied on human quality inspection, which was inefficient and could not guarantee accuracy. Now Quectel adopts its own intelligent module + AI algorithm, replaces the traditional product inspection method with machines, and solves some defects in the past production line. In addition, according to Yang Zhongzhi, based on the field of industrial quality inspection, Quectel has developed customized solutions covering dozens of industries, such as solder joint monitoring solutions for PC customers; power adapter solutions for notebook manufacturers, and so on.
To sum up, in the process of moving from the Internet of Everything to the Intelligent Connection of Everything, 5G has built a high-speed and stable transmission channel to ensure connection; AI has cultivated a smart space to realize intelligent upgrades. However, on a global scale, there are still distant places that cannot be reached by terrestrial cellular networks, such as vast forests, oceans, deep mountains, grasslands and other areas, which also have intelligent needs. According to statistics, currently, on a global scale, terrestrial cellular communications cover less than 30% of the land area. To achieve wider interconnection, the support of satellite communications is needed.
In June last year, 3GPP R17 confirmed the NTN standard, which opened the way for the rapid development of satellite communications. In response to this, Quectel, as a pioneer in leading communication technology, also took the lead in deploying the field of satellite communication, released a satellite communication module not long ago, and is stepping up the development of NTN communication module. Zhang Dong bluntly said that this will be an excellent solution for many industries such as maritime, transportation, heavy equipment and natural resources.
In addition, Zhang Dong also introduced the capabilities of Quectel in short-distance transmission and positioning. Among them, Quectel's products in the field of short-distance communication include three mainstream businesses: RF Wi-Fi, MCU Wi-Fi, and car-grade Wi-Fi. At the same time, more short-distance system solutions including UWB and Mesh networking are also being studied. In order to further expand the application scenarios of short-distance communication, it also combines Quectel Cloud, Matter and other services to launch scenario-based application solutions in industries such as whole-house intelligence, photovoltaics, energy storage, and BMS.
In terms of positioning, Quectel has established a GNSS product line since the company was established, and it is during these ten years that Quectel has accumulated profound GNSS professional technical capabilities. According to Zhang Dong, Quectel currently has a variety of high-precision inertial navigation modules, which can provide accurate location services even in scenarios without GNSS signals; high-reliability, vehicle-level modules with high-quality observations ; At the same time, it is also deploying multi-frequency high-precision positioning modules, which can be applied in fields such as smart agricultural machinery and unmanned agricultural plant protection.
An overall understanding of the overall layout of Quectel Communications in recent years is not difficult to find that Quectel Communications has been upgraded from a simple cellular module supplier in our traditional impression to an "Internet of Things overall solution provider", which is a typical vertical field of the Internet of Things , providing a more complete solution. For example, in the vertical field of automobiles, Quectel continues to follow up the changes in the architecture of automotive electronics and electrical appliances, as well as the iteration of core technologies, and has laid out a complete series of products such as cellular, C-V2X, smart cockpit, smart antenna, GNSS, and short-distance. So far, Quectel has delivered more than 40 automakers and more than 60 first-tier suppliers around the world.
In addition to terminal hardware design, IoT system development also has a technical difficulty that is difficult to circumvent—device cloud. In order to solve this difficulty, Quectel launched QuecCloud, an IoT cloud platform. Through QuecThing OS and the developer platform, the complexity of development is greatly simplified, and with SaaS & App, it can help terminals to quickly go to the cloud. At the same time, Quectel has also developed a wealth of industry cloud solutions, covering many scenarios such as outdoor travel, smart home, shared leasing, and smart city. According to reports, the Quectel Cloud platform has delivered more than 500 corporate customers.
write at the end
At Quectel's Internet of Things Ecological Conference, Zhang Dong compared the company's product lines for the Internet of Things to the Internet of Things Galaxy. It is true that although the Internet of Things has been developed for many years, it is always bursting with new vitality under the integration of new technologies. In the sea of stars of the Internet of Things, there are countless vertical application scenarios, and these rich scenarios will rely on 5G, AI, Satellite communication, positioning and other technologies are connected in series to realize the real intelligent connection of all things!