Huawei plots course for 5Gigaverse society

Communications technology giant Huawei is proposing that the next logical step for the comms industry is to evolve 5G to build a ubiquitous gigabit network and what it calls a “5Gigaverse society”.

The proposition was put foward in a keynote speech by Yang Chaobin (pictured above), president of Huawei Wireless Solution, at the 12th Global Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF) entitled Innovation for 5Gigaverse Society. Yang noted the rapid development of 5G, with more than 170 networks built and nearly 500 million users developed within two years. Because of this rapid growth, he emphasised the need to move from 5G hotspots to all-scenario continuous coverage.

Yang’s address also highlighted how changes in user behaviour and industry digitisation are placing higher requirements on 5G. He revealed that according to the viewing statistics collected from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the number of views through mobile devices increased five-fold compared with 2012, while the amount of TV watching dropped by 50%.

He also noted that in the context of fixed wireless access (FWA), the number of users exceeded that of wired users. In addition, 5G traffic has increased by three times compared with that of 4G as video services grow. The logical conclusion was that the industry should expect that by 2030, mobile networks will carry more traffic than wired networks and become the main bearer of internet traffic.

Yang highlighted that in the light of these trends, progress has been made in industry digitisation, with 5G enabling more than 10,000 scenarios in over 20 industries worldwide. In the future, he said, 5G capabilities will continue to evolve to incorporate fragmented connections in various industries, creating an internet of things (IoT) space with hundreds of billions of connections.

“So, a macro-pole-indoor 3D networking mode needs to be adopted to maximise the value of macro sites by deploying pole sites and indoor products on demand,” he said. “In this way, we will be able to build 5G networks with continuous coverage to enable B2B and B2C and embrace a 5Gigaverse society.”

As he looked at how this 5Gigaverse was likely to be delivered, Yang pointed to massive MIMO and ultra-wideband mobile services to maximise macro coverage and capacity. He observed that two years of commercial 5G deployment have 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. He calculated that macro sites currently account for up to 45% of operators’ investment in network construction, and so how to maximise macro capacity and coverage was a top concern.

“Different spectrum requires different strategies customised based on their characteristics,” said Yang. “The TDD [time division duplex] spectrum featuring high bandwidth and large capacity has weaker coverage compared with low frequency bands and requires coverage improvement, while FDD [frequency division duplex] featuring wide coverage and fragmented spectrum requires capacity improvement.

“It has become an industry consensus that massive MIMO is the right choice for deployment with continuous large-bandwidth TDD bands. For markets where new TDD bands are not licensed yet, the legacy FDD spectrum can be used to modernise installed bases using the massive MIMO and ultra-wideband technologies, reducing deployment costs and improving 4G and 5G experience and capacity.”

Yang said that in the forthcoming decade of 5G, innovation will never stop and the industry 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,” he added.