Viewpoint
Over the last few years, there has been a massive uptake in the adoption of 5G across the world. Today, more than 200 5G networks serve more than 600 million 5G users. This number is all set to increase dramatically over the next decade as more and more people continue to join the 5G revolution.
Huawei’s vision for 5G has two major components: 5Gigaverse for ubiquitous experience and 5G green for reduced carbon emissions. The company has developed four key technologies to achieve this vision: multi-antenna, ultrawideband and simplified solution for all scenarios. Together these technologies will allow the service providers to leverage the potential of 5G to grow their revenue while providing superior and innovative use cases to their subscribers.
“5G uses both TDD and FDD spectrum to achieve continuous coverage. New TDD bands with high bandwidths are deployed to improve user experience and energy efficiency, while FDD legacy spectrum evolution benefits both 4G and 5G networks. In the future, mmWave spectrum can provide larger bandwidth to supplement hotspot capacity requirements. This is how 5G spectrum will be used in the decade,” says Gan Bin, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Wireless Network Product Line, Huawei. He was delivering a presentation on Innovation for 5Gigaverse Society at Mobile World Congress 2022 .
A crucial part of Huawei’s 5Gigaverse vision is IntelligentRAN, a new wireless architecture to support the service providers through the use of service operations intelligence, experience optimization, and more efficient operations and management. Huawei launched Intelligent RAN only earlier this month.
"It sets the foundation for native wireless intelligence and offers multiple use cases, like smart green, smart service, smart O&M and intelligent slicing to help the service providers realize the vision of 5Gigaverse society," says Gan.
Leveraging MetaAAU
A key component of Huawei’s 5Gigaverse is MetaAAU which helps in better coverage and enables service providers to have sustainable operations. "Since the launch of MetaAAU in August 2021, we have conducted several large-scale tests on commercial networks with operators in China in over a dozen cities. MetaAAU demonstrated a 3 dB better coverage and 30% improved experience than the second-generation 64T Massive MIMO. More importantly, MetaAAU only needs half of the transmit power, reducing energy consumption by 30%," elaborated Gan.
Massive MIMO to address coverage challenges
"Based on our accumulations, we have increased elements in our antenna from 192 to 384, upgrading Massive MIMO products from the second generation to the third. This doubling is a key feature of the third generation, and can enhance the experience by 30%, improve coverage by 3 dB, and also cut power consumption by 30%," explains Gan.
Recently Huawei upgraded the second-generation Massive MIMO to the third-generation. For ultra-wide bandwidth scenarios, Huawei is planning to launch a commercial 400 MHz product that supports a transmit power of 400 W. This way, only one box would be required to support 400 MHz, instead of the two used by most vendors.
"For operators, this means larger bandwidth leading to lower costs when co-constructing and sharing networks, and reduced power consumed by the network sites," says Gan.
Using BladeAAU and ultra-wideband to realise 5Gigaverse vision
Different service providers are at various stages of evolution and have different requirements for Massive MIMO deployment. For instance, if a telco wants to deploy frequency bands from 700 MHz to 2.6 GHz or all 3.5 GHz bands on one pole, Huawei’s BladeAAU helps address this problem by integrating key antenna and filter technologies.
"Last year, we rolled out the third-generation BladeAAU. It’s the industry’s first and only all-in-one AAU. It supports various combinations of Massive MIMO and antennas, including TDD Massive MIMO on 2.3 GHz, 2.6 GHz, 3.5 GHz, or 4.9 GHz, and FDD Massive MIMO on both 1.8 GHz and 2.1 GHz. In addition, the third-generation BladeAAU can hold antennas of any size," explains Gan.
Besides, Huawei has also launched FDD ultra-wideband multi-antenna products. "These include the true triple-band RRU, which has the lightest weight and supports the widest bands in the industry; the industry’s first high-power ultra-wideband 8T8R product; the industry’s only green Hertz antenna; and the industry’s only commercial FDD Massive MIMO product. These portfolios will help us promote extensive commercialization of 5G," adds Gan.
Regarding the indoor and urban hotspot-related coverage of 5G, Huawei’s EasyMacro 3.0 and Book RRU 3.0 are capable of both TDD and FDD to ensure end-to-end coverage. Further, distributed Massive MIMO increases coverage and network capacity by as much as four times and improves user experience by more than 30%.
5G is all set to transform our lives and provides an unprecedented opportunity for service providers to grow their revenue while offering new and pathbreaking use cases to their subscribers. Huawei’s range of products is enabling service providers in optimal use of the available resources while delivering exceptional network performance to the end-users.
