At present, the development of 5G has gradually become better.

After 5G concept warm-up, universal technology popularization triggered by the Huawei incident, and 5G license issuance, it has now entered the industry chain to develop and produce equipment, operators intensively build 5G networks, and leading terminal manufacturers have released 5G mobile phones one after another. The communications industry and vertical industries are stepping up the development and application stage. As of July this year, 38,000 5G base stations have been built nationwide. It is expected that by the end of 2019, the total number of 5G base stations nationwide will further increase.

In terms of terminals, 5G terminals are now gradually enriched. 5G consumer terminals will still be in the main form of smartphones. 5G terminal companies dominated by domestic enterprises have successively released commercial terminals. At least 13 commercial terminals have been connected to the network. Before the end of 2019, my country is expected to launch 5G commercial use in a number of cities, and the much-anticipated 5G era is coming to us.

But when any new generation of technology just appeared, it was always accompanied by some doubts, which has almost become the law of history. Whether it is the previous 2G to 3G, 3G to 4G technology upgrade in the mobile communications field, or the replacement of carriages to cars in the transportation field, new things are often criticized in the early stages. Even though 5G has been repeatedly demonstrated by the industry, we still hear some noises from time to time. In response to some of the outside world''s misinformation on 5G, a reporter from the Japan Daily interviewed relevant experts from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (hereinafter referred to as the Academy of Information and Communications Technology).

Question 1: 5G is only higher than 4G technical indicators, there are no new application scenarios?

Experts from the Institute of Information and Communications Technology believe that, compared with 4G, 5G can not only achieve stronger performance, but also has more abundant application scenarios, including three application scenarios of enhanced mobile broadband, low latency, high reliability, and low power consumption large connections. In order to meet the diverse performance requirements of different application scenarios, 5G adopts a different design concept from 4G. Among them, 5G wireless technology adopts system flexible design, supports multiple parameter sets, flexible frame structure configuration and scheduling, flexible waveforms and other key technologies. Realize the same hardware platform to meet the needs of multiple scenarios. The 5G core network adopts a new service-oriented network architecture, which can develop customized network business processes for different business scenarios, and realize network slicing and edge computing.

Among them, enhanced mobile broadband is the first commercial scenario for 5G. Even in this scenario, the data transmission rate is not only 10 times higher than that of 4G, and its delay is less than 4ms, which is nearly 3 times higher than the 10ms delay of 4G. Due to the improvement of high-speed and low-latency performance, some mobile broadband applications that 4G cannot meet, such as 4K/8K high-definition video, 3D video, and AR/VR, can provide a better service experience.

Question 2: Is it difficult for 5G to achieve low latency and high reliability?

Experts from the Institute of Information and Communications Technology believe that the first thing that needs to be clarified is that the 1ms delay of 5G defined by international standards is not an end-to-end delay, but the delay of the wireless air interface.

In terms of 5G low latency, wireless technology mainly adopts wider subcarriers/shorter symbol lengths, flexible scheduling granularity, self-contained frame structure to achieve feedback as soon as possible, optimal transmission schemes when multiple services coexist, etc.; network technology in order to reduce End-to-end business latency, edge computing is one of the effective solutions. Sinking business information or information processing to the nearest location to the terminal can effectively reduce the end-to-end latency. Edge computing has been successfully applied to the Internet of Things In the solution.

In terms of 5G high reliability, 5G has designed a higher-level control channel, a defined dedicated level, a smaller control information load, repeated transmission of traffic channels, and support for data diversity transmission, etc., to achieve high reliability under low latency.

Through the above technical solutions, the 5G system has supported IoT application scenarios such as industrial automation and power distribution. Taking industrial automation as an example, when 5G supports a data load of 32 bytes, the air interface delay is less than 1ms, and the end-to-end delay is less than 2ms, which is reliable Sexual satisfaction is 99.9999%.

Question 3: Are the 5G core network architecture and protocols too complicated?

Experts from the Institute of Information and Communications Technology believe that in terms of the 5G core network architecture, the 5G network adopts a service-oriented architecture (SBA), which rationalizes, deconstructs and reorganizes the logical functions of the core network (modularization). The interaction is more complicated, but in fact, the service-oriented network is easier to achieve flexible customization, tailoring and simplifying deployment; in terms of service-oriented interface protocols, the service-oriented interface of the 5G network architecture adopts a normalized protocol stack (HTTP/JSON ), in line with the development trend of information and communication technology, unifying the multiple protocols of 4G, greatly simplifying the complexity of the protocol.

The 5G core network architecture and agreement have been basically stable. At present, the core network products of major 5G companies have been developed and tested for interoperability. Of course, because the new IT-based protocol structure is more flexible in terms of definition, different manufacturers have different understandings in the initial stage. The interconnection and interoperability will take some time to run in, but it will not affect the commercial deployment of 5G core networks.

Question 4: Are the cost of 5G equipment and network construction too high?

According to experts from the Institute of Information and Communications Technology, 5G can achieve more than 10 times the performance of 4G, and stronger performance also means higher equipment costs. Taking a typical 5G macro base station as an example, large-scale antenna technology is adopted, and the number of equipment channels is from 4G. The 8 channels are increased to 32/64 channels, the processing complexity of software and hardware has greatly increased, and the number and performance specifications of digital and radio frequency devices have also been greatly improved. The estimated total cost in the initial stage is about 2 to 3 times that of 4G equipment. However, with the gradual maturity of the 5G industry and the expansion of network construction, equipment prices will decrease.

At the same time, my country''s 5G commercial initial stage will mainly carry out network deployment in the mid-band. After the path loss compensation is carried out through large-scale antennas and other technologies, the 5G mid-band coverage is not very different from 4G. The number of 5G mid-band base stations is expected to be about 1.5 times that of 4G. .

In general, the increase in the scale of base stations and the increase in the cost of a single station will increase the cost of 5G network construction. According to China Mobile''s forecast, it will be about twice the investment in 4G network construction. Currently, manufacturing companies continue to work hard to enhance the performance of 5G products and reduce costs. At the same time, operating companies can also reduce network construction costs through network co-construction and sharing, accelerate the pace of 5G commercial use, and realize 5G commercial scale as soon as possible.

In addition, we are pleased to see that the price of 5G terminals is falling faster than expected, which allows more users to enjoy 5G services soon.

Question 5: The current 5G can only provide mobile enhanced broadband services, but the low-latency and high-reliability scenarios that realize the Internet of Everything does not seem to be capable?

According to experts from the Institute of Information and Communications Technology, some people think that the original design of 5G is three scenarios, but the current implementation is only one scenario for enhancing mobile broadband, which is inconsistent with the 5G vision design. You should know that 5G technical standards and industrial development are a gradual process, and 5G technology can guarantee the expansion of multiple scenarios under a unified technical architecture.

In June 2018, the first version of the 5G standard completed the enhanced mobile broadband scenario, and the second version of the 5G standard in March 2020 will complete the low-latency and high-reliability scenario. 5G products will be provided within 1 to 2 years after the 5G standard is frozen. 5G technology will continue to enhance performance and expand application scenarios during its ten-year life cycle.