CommScope Lin Haifeng: The "green shoots" of 5G outdoor wireless connection are sprouting

The recent global economic slowdown has inevitably hindered the investment and deployment of 5G networks. As we all know, the deployment of 5G network requires a lot of money, and its operation requires a lot of power consumption. In the global economic boom, these costs can be recovered by increasing the additional fees paid by users to obtain high-performance networks. However, in today's economic situation, users themselves are also facing cost reduction pressure.

Therefore, there are many reports about mobile network operators' postponement of 5G network construction and reduction plans. However, CommScope does not want to repeat these disadvantages here, because 5G is confident in its development in the next year.

The overall construction of 5G may be delayed, but it will not deviate from the track

At present, there have been two major changes (which may be accelerated in 2024): one is the 5G base station simplification measures that can reduce costs, and the other is the emergence of new disruptive business use cases that take advantage of the unique capabilities of 5G networks.

The superposition of these two factors will probably bring new vitality and enthusiasm to this technology. It is expected that this technology will still be the basis of wireless connectivity in at least the next decade or two. Therefore, I think the next year will prove that 5G may be delayed, but it will never deviate from the track.

Simplification and cost reduction

At the initial stage of 5G network deployment, non independent networking (NSA) is used. These networks use the existing LTE network to provide mobile networks and generation signals, making full use of the advantages of this method to speed up the deployment. However, this also increases the complexity of base station design. In the field of wireless networks, "complexity" is actually another term for "cost".

Therefore, this superimposed NSA network architecture had to compromise, making the technology failed to achieve the expected effect of publicity when it was first released. In the future, if you want to truly simplify the network architecture, mobile network operators can no longer rely on the design of early network technologies. And because of some recent innovations in the industry, they no longer need this. Some measures to reduce complexity and cost include:

New antenna design integrating active and passive RF technologies into a simplified integrated form 。 This kind of antenna can not only reduce the volume and weight of tower top deployment, but also improve the flexibility of mobile network operators when designing networks because 5G and LTE networks can operate in parallel with little impact on performance. These integrated designs can also reduce the wind load on the tower top, or can eliminate the need to upgrade the expensive bearing structure to support the newly added 5G components, thus reducing the upgrade cost of each base station by tens of thousands of dollars.

When mobile network operators replace the most expensive and powerful 64T64R mMIMO solution on the Acer station with a more economical 32T32R mMIMO solution, Reasonably adjusting the construction scale of 5G can better balance the cost and income To reduce deployment costs without affecting the 5G services currently required. In addition, the optimized 8T8R passive solution can be used to replace the 64T64R and 32T32R mMIMO used in the macro base station and the 16T16R mMIMO used in the mini base station to further save costs.

With the increasing popularity of 5G devices and the emergence of high-value use cases, the 5G network will transition from NSA architecture to independent networking (SA) architecture 。 This will enable the network to gradually develop towards cloud native deployment. While reducing the cost of each base station equipment, it can also improve the power consumption and service delivery of the network through AI (for example, by using network slicing).

These new improvements are directly aimed at the cost challenges of 5G deployment, making it easier for mobile network operators to start, continue or speed up the deployment.

Of course, if the market is unwilling to bear the cost of adopting new functions, even a more sensible and moderate investment will become unreasonable. Fortunately, the second key factor that will emerge in 2024 will also help solve this problem.

New 5G business use case - private network

5G has many unique performance characteristics, first of all, its amazing speed, huge capacity and ultra-low latency. However, in some aspects, the performance of 5G seems to have exceeded some of the requirements it needs to meet. For example, although the 1ms delay is amazing, there are few applications that really need it. High performance undoubtedly promotes the development of high demand applications, but it still takes some time for these applications to enter the market.

Having said that, some new business use cases now appear to regard 5G as the preferred or even essential technology platform, even though they do not need to reach 1ms delay. Enterprises, large public places, tourism distribution centers and other large indoor, outdoor and indoor/outdoor combination places are increasingly interested in wireless private networks, and the network traffic in these places is often large.

Compared with LTE, 5G gains advantages in capacity and throughput by combining higher spectrum and more powerful wireless system (mMIMO). It is no accident that the first 5G devices are installed in more urban environments, but only in these environments can 5G networks most effectively provide high traffic density. However, due to the limitation of its link budget, 5G is difficult to connect from the outdoor macro base station to the indoor users who contribute most of the traffic. The indoor mini base station and DAS solution can solve this problem by transmitting indoor traffic back to the core network, but another discrete 5G network, 5G private network, has also emerged.

Through the internal 5G network, enterprises (or airports, hospitals, stadiums, etc.) can provide more than ordinary Wi Fi ® Security and privacy of 5G connection. Users can not only enjoy the speed and capacity of 5G (which can only be guaranteed indoors), but also use the security of end-to-end encryption to protect voice, e-mail, text and online activities on networked devices.

In fact, the security advantages of the 5G private network will only grow in the next few years. After 2024, it is expected that the emergence of quantum security encryption technology (QSC) (perhaps five or ten years away) will significantly improve the encryption strength and eliminate the current encryption methods. To this end, GSMA set up the Quantum Secure Telecommunication Network Working Group last year, aiming to develop strong regulatory standards for the use of such encryption technologies in the future.

5G private network will become one of the most anticipated new business use cases of 5G, and the market is still in its infancy. In 2024, the global interest and investment in this security and high-performance technology will certainly increase significantly.

5G will usher in a brighter year

The global economy and dynamic international situation may slow down the overall construction of 5G, but it has never stopped. 5G technology has broad prospects and many advantages, and will not be suppressed in the long run. As far as the Chinese market is concerned, as of November 2023, China has built a total of 3.282 million 5G base stations, and the empowerment of 5G for all walks of life is also increasingly in-depth. This year, thanks to the optimization measures of base station architecture that can reduce costs and people's interest in 5G private networks, 5G networks will continue to move forward.

Today, 6G is still developing, and 5G will be the foundation of wireless network in the next decade at least. Therefore, the current adverse factors will not affect 5G's full potential in the long run; On the contrary, these changes are likely to lead us to a new direction in 2024, which is now beginning to attract attention.

This article is an original article. If it is reproduced, please indicate the source: CommScope Lin Haifeng: The "green shoots" of 5G outdoor wireless connection are sprouting https://net.zol.com.cn/855/8557044.html