Huawei’s Yang Chaobin: Innovation for 5Gigaverse Society

[Dubai, UAE, October 14, 2021] During the 12th Global Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF) 2021, Yang Chaobin, President of Huawei Wireless Solution, delivered a keynote speech titled "Innovation for 5Gigaverse Society".

Huawei’s Yang Chaobin

"5G is developing rapidly worldwide, with more than 170 networks built and nearly 500 million users developed within two years. As 5G commercial deployment enters a new phase, users need more continuous experience, and industry digitalization poses new requirements on 5G capabilities. Therefore, we believe that the next step is to evolve 5G from hotspot to all-scenario continuous coverage, from Gbps to 5Gigaverse, and from pilot industry to all-industry digitalization, to build a ubiquitous gigabit network and a 5Gigaverse society," said Mr. Yang.

Changes in user behavior and industry digitization pose higher requirements on 5G. According to the viewing statistics during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the number of views through mobile devices increased by five times compared with 2012, while the amount of TV watching dropped by 50%. In terms of FWA, the number of users exceeds that of wired users. In addition, the 5G DOU has increased by three times compared with that of 4G as video services grow. Therefore, it is expected that by 2030, mobile networks will carry more traffic than wired networks and become the main bearer of internet traffic. In toB exploration, progress has been made in industry digitalization. 5G has enabled more than 10,000 scenarios in more than 20 industries worldwide. In the future, 5G capabilities will continue to evolve to incorporate fragmented connections in various industries, creating an IoT space with hundreds of billions of connections.

"So, a macro-pole-indoor 3D networking mode needs to be adopted to maximize the value of macro sites by deploying pole sites and indoor products on demand. In this way, we'll be able to build 5G networks with continuous coverage to enable toB and toC and embrace a 5Ggaverse society," said Mr. Yang.

Massive MIMO and ultra-wideband maximize macro coverage and capacity. Macro sites account for up to 45% of operators' investment in network construction. Therefore, how to maximize macro capacity and coverage becomes a top concern. Two years of commercial 5G deployment has proved that the Massive MIMO and ultra-wideband technologies can improve user experience by 10 times and have become the choice of most operators around the world. "Different spectrum requires different strategies customized based on their characteristics. The TDD spectrum featuring high bandwidth and large capacity has weaker coverage compared with low frequency bands and requires coverage improvement, while FDD featuring wide coverage and fragmented spectrum requires capacity improvement. Therefore, we launched a full range of 5G base station products this year to help operators meet these requirements," said Mr. Yang.

"It has become an industry consensus that Massive MIMO is the right choice for deployment with continuous large-bandwidth TDD bands. For markets with discrete spectrum, Huawei launched Massive MIMO AAU with 400 MHz bandwidth to enable simplified deployment. For markets with limited antenna spaces, Huawei offers BladeAAU that supports simplified single-antenna deployment through the integration of sub-3 GHz and Massive MIMO." Huawei also released the new 64TRX MetaAAU with improved performance and energy saving.

"Our brand-new MetaAAU introduces the extreme-large antenna array (ELAA) technology and the innovative AHR Turbo solution, marking a new breakthrough in Massive MIMO coverage and energy efficiency. Compared with the traditional AAUs with 192 antenna elements, ELAA features 384 antenna elements and is integrated with the ultra-light integrated array and SDIF technologies to improve both coverage and integration. AHR Turbo, an adaptive high-resolution beamforming algorithm, enables the MetaAAU to be precise, dynamic, and targeted, greatly improving user experience and cell capacity. By now, this product has been put into commercial use in four cities by the three tier-1 operators in China. MetaAAU provides 3 dB better coverage and 30% better user experience compared with 64T, and 6 dB better coverage and 60% better user experience compared with 32T. It allows base stations to achieve the same level of cell edge coverage with a lower transmit power, reducing energy consumption by about 30% compared with traditional AAUs."

For markets where new TDD bands are not licensed yet, the legacy FDD spectrum can be used to modernize installed bases using the Massive MIMO and ultra-wideband technologies, reducing deployment costs and improving 4G and 5G experience and capacity.

Huawei's high-power, ultra-wideband 4T4R RRU, unique in the industry, supports three bands (700 MHz, 800 MHz, and 900 MHz; 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz, and 2.6 GHz/1.4 GHz) in one box, simplifying multi-band network deployment. It enables full-band and all-RAT dynamic power sharing, improving user experience by 30% and reducing power consumption by 30%. For modernization of legacy spectrum, Huawei launched ultra-high-power, ultra-wideband 8T8R RRU, which is also unique in the industry. This product supports 1.8 GHz and 2.1 GHz bands in one box. It works with the first Hertz platform-based 8T8R native antenna, greatly improving coverage and capacity.

For high-capacity scenarios with limited antenna spaces, Huawei will launch FDD BladeAAU which packs Massive MIMO and the sub-3 GHz full-band antenna in one box this year, enabling simplified deployment of sub-3 GHz sites. The FDD BladeAAU and MetaAAU can be used together to further empower simplified deployment of all frequency bands, enabling Massive MIMO to provide coverage that can match 900 MHz 2T2R. This allows operators to achieve a wide, seamless gigabit experience.

Pole sites extend macro coverage with on-demand simplified deployment for coverage hole fill-up and at hotspots. This is important for mobile networks in streets and residential areas where site acquisition is challenging, as they offer a simple approach to deploy macro sites by leveraging lamp poles and walls. The pole sites must support both TDD and FDD bands to cover both 4G and 5G users. In 2020, Huawei launched a series of simplified solutions, TDD and FDD dual-band EasyMacro 3.0 and BookRRU 3.0, to help operators quickly fill up 5G coverage holes. This year, Huawei released a new pole site product EasyBlink 2.0 to further simplify pole site deployment. The industry's smallest and lightest AAU product — just 20 L and 10 kg — EasyBlink 2.0 supports 32T32R and uses optimized antenna arrays, lending itself to conveniently improving coverage or capacity in areas such as streets where coverage holes often occur or capacity is limited due to challenging macro deployment.

Huawei provides the industry's only distributed Massive MIMO solution for 5G indoor ubiquitous Gbps experience. In indoor areas, simplified deployment is crucial for operators to implement multi-RAT and multi-band deployment that can ensure optimal user experience. Huawei's LampSite solution supports TDD and FDD bands of multiple radio access technologies in one box and supports indoor distributed Massive MIMO. These features enable it to improve network capacity fourfold compared with 4T4R, ensuring indoor ubiquitous Gbps experience. It is the best suited to provide coverage in major indoor areas, such as airports, railway stations, and shopping malls.

Huawei provides a simplified 5GtoB solution for different campus scenarios. In factories and campuses, custom coverage is often required on the macro networks that are used to ensure continuous coverage. LampSite and EasyMacro provide an ideal choice for operators to quickly implement 5G coverage in indoor and outdoor campus areas, respectively. The SUL solution further enables operators to provide Gigabit uplink data speed. Huawei's 5GtoB solutions also enables operators to conveniently meet the differentiated requirements of different industries in uplink ultra-wideband, high-precision positioning, low latency, and high reliability.

Intelligent engine drives networks to autonomous driving. In this decade, multi-band and multi-standard co-existence will be a major trend. Operators must coordinate macro, pole, and indoor 3D network O&M, meet differentiated experience of toB, toC, and toH users, and maximize network performance with minimized power consumption. This further highlights the urgency of developing intelligent wireless networks. With this in mind, Huawei has launched its intelligent engine, which covers PowerStar 2.0, Capacity Turbo, WTTx Suite, and 5GtoB Suite to promote autonomous driving networks. PowerStar 2.0 introduces intelligence to base stations. It analyzes factors such as coverage, load, and service type and generates energy saving policies to help reduce network energy consumption by 25% while maintaining premium performance. Capacity Turbo implements 3D coordination among macro, pole, and indoor networks through intelligent analysis and decision-making, such as beam measurement, traffic map, and user rate, achieving optimal experience in all scenarios on all frequency bands. As a result, user experience can be improved by more than 30%. The 5G WTTx Suite provides accurate rate evaluation based on user locations and identification and optimization of poor-performing CPEs. It enables operators to determine where services can be provisioned and what user experience should be provided while reducing poor-performing CPEs by 30%. The 5GtoB Suite provides intelligent and precise planning and proactive device/network O&M functions to help enterprises plan toB networks and manage toB QoS. With the 5GtoB Suite, the network planning time for a factory is reduced from more than 40 hours to about 8 hours. In addition, the 5GtoB Suite can be used to quickly locate and rectify faults within 15 minutes.

"Innovation will never stop. The next decade will be a decade of 5G. 5G will continue to evolve and innovate toward 5.5G. We hope to work with global partners to continuously innovate based on user experience and industry requirements to take user experience to new heights while digitally transforming industries."

The 12th Global Mobile Broadband Forum offers an opportunity for the mobile and adjacent vertical ecosystems to reconnect, rebuild, and reimagine a fully connected, intelligent world. Topics currently under discussion with global partners range from maximizing the potential of 5G, including industry use cases and applications, to advancing the mobile future.

For more information, please visit: https://www.huawei.com/en/events/mbbf2021.