Labs Guide

Judging from the global 4G development status, unlimited packages have become the mainstream tariff model. With the rapid growth of monthly average traffic of users, the continuous expansion of the network cannot bring corresponding revenue growth, and the traditional traffic management model in the personal market encounters a bottleneck. In order to support their own sustainable development, operators need to "open source and reduce expenditure", find new market space, cultivate new growth models, and at the same time save costs to reduce the cost of network operation, maintenance and construction. NB-IoT/eMTC is an attempt by operators to face the low-speed, low-cost and low-power IoT market in the 4G era, trying to break through a massive market space. Facing the differentiated and fragmented IoT application market, NB-IoT/eMTC is difficult to fully meet the demand. 5G uses new air interface capabilities (low latency, high reliability, etc.), flexible network architecture, end-to-end network slicing and Mobile edge computing, etc., will further empower vertical industry applications. This article combines the development and evolution of 5G standards to analyze how 5G can meet the differentiated business needs of vertical industries.

1 Introduction

The rapid development of 4G and smartphones has brought great convenience to our daily work and life, making social operation and management more efficient. The rapid development of 4G has promoted the prosperity of Internet applications, and applications such as instant messaging, online shopping, navigation, online payment, and video have emerged one after another. Smartphones have become not only a communication tool, but also a personal and social platform. Holding a smartphone in hand, you can freely choose online shopping or use mobile payment for offline shopping, which makes our daily life more convenient than ever, and changes our consumption behavior and daily behavior. The rapid popularization of 4G combined with the breakthrough of consumer electronic products is cultivating new services and applications, bringing new challenges to the mobile communication network itself. Augmented reality technology (AR), virtual reality technology (VR), high-definition video technology (4K/8K), naked eye 3D, these fantastic applications put forward higher requirements on the capability, capacity and efficiency of mobile communication networks [ 1].

On the other hand, judging from the status quo of 4G development of global operators, unlimited packages have become the mainstream tariff model. With the rapid growth of monthly average traffic of users, the continuous expansion of the network cannot bring corresponding income growth, and the traditional personal market The traffic business model encountered bottlenecks. In order to support the sustainable development of the entire industry, operators need to "open source and reduce expenditure". "Open source" means finding new market space and cultivating new growth models, and "throttling" means saving costs and reducing network O&M and construction costs. In order to expand new business models, operators also try to use edge computing (MEC), eMBMS, V2X and other technologies to expand new industries and new business models on the 4G network, but all are due to the solidification of the 4G network architecture and the unclear business model. For other reasons, it only stays in the demonstration and demonstration stage. NB-IoT/eMTC is an attempt by operators to face the low-speed, low-cost and low-power IoT market in the 4G era, trying to break through a massive market space and bring new growth.

The expansion of 4G in industry and enterprise-level applications provides us with good experience and lessons. First, services and content should be deployed as close to users as possible, which can reduce service acquisition delays and improve user experience; second, deployment of new services and applications should be fast and low-cost; in addition, the network should support flexible and reconfigurable It can be deployed to meet differentiated application scenarios and needs; while the Industrial Internet and autonomous driving require lower latency and higher reliability.

Faced with the above application requirements, 4G is difficult to meet, which makes us pin our expectations on a new generation of mobile communication systems, namely 5G. The goal of 5G is to become a new generation of information infrastructure through the expansion of its own capabilities. Through the interconnection of everything, as shown in Figure 1, it will empower all walks of life, promote the informatization and digital development of society, and improve the efficiency and quality of economic development. Improve the efficiency of social operation and governance.

Looking back on the history of the development of mobile communication technology, 1G and 2G solved the problem of making calls while on the move, 3G and 4G focused on solving the problem of fast Internet access and watching videos, and 5G turned the focus to the vertical industry market demand for the first time. In the face of differentiated and fragmented business needs, 5G will further deepen the development of 5G through new air interface capabilities (low latency, high reliability, etc.), service-oriented network architecture, end-to-end network slicing, and mobile edge computing. Empower vertical industry applications.

Figure 1 5G Vision: Internet of Everything, Empowering Vertical Industries

2. 5G defines new capabilities and fully empowers vertical industries

The first phase of the 5G standard (Rel-15) mainly focuses on the urgent needs of individuals and industries in the early stage of 5G commercial use, focusing on eMBB and simplified URLLC scenarios, and there is no design standard for mMTC scenarios. To this end, Rel-15 defines the core architecture of the 5G system, including the new 5GC core network, SA independent networking and NSA non-independent networking solutions, and also defines the basic framework and core functions of the 5G system. Below, we will comprehensively explain the new air interface capabilities, service-oriented network architecture, network slicing, edge computing and other new features of 5G from the perspective of network operation and service provision.

2.1 New air interface capability[1]

For the first time, 5G has shifted the focus of services to vertical industries. Therefore, from the beginning of 5G research and development, the industry has reached a consensus on the application scenarios that 5G needs to cover, including enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), low-cost and low-power large-scale connectivity (mMTC), ultra-reliable and ultra-low latency communication (URLLC). For the above application scenarios, ITU-R and 3GPP have defined corresponding performance requirements in detail, such as 20Gbps peak data rate, 0.5ms air interface transmission delay, 3 to 5 times higher spectral efficiency than 4G, gigabit per square kilometer Connection density, service density of 10Tbps per square kilometer, and 100-fold improvement in efficiency. In order to maintain the sustainable development of the entire ecosystem, we expect 5G to be extremely low-cost, with a 1,000-fold improvement in price/performance per bit.

The first version of the 5G standard (Rel-15) meets 5G multi-scenario and diversified service requirements through a flexible and unified 5G NR design. The capabilities related to vertical industry application requirements include:

-Low latency: 5G requires a one-way air interface latency of 0.5ms, which puts forward higher requirements for network scheduling latency and system flexibility. The Rel-15 standard meets the low-latency requirements by introducing technologies such as flexible frame structure, short-time-domain scheduling unit, scheduling-free transmission, and mobile edge computing MEC (end-to-end latency can be reduced to 10ms).

-High reliability: 5G can already support 99.999% high reliability applications with data packet size less than 32 bytes by improving coding redundancy, increasing scheduling priority, reducing coding order, and multiple transmissions.

-High speed: 5G faces requirements such as high speed and high capacity, and the spectral efficiency needs to be increased to 3 to 5 times that of 4G to meet user needs. The Rel-15 standard is improved by technologies such as large bandwidth (100MHz, 400MHz), large-scale antenna and MU-MIMO enhancement, cancellation of CRS reference signal, channel information feedback design, Polar/LDPC coding, and millimeter wave (not introduced in the early stage of 5G commercial use). 5G peak rate and capacity.

-Wide coverage: The 5G deployment frequency band is relatively high, and it is difficult to achieve continuous coverage based on the construction of the existing 4G site. The Rel-15 standard extends 5G network coverage capabilities through technologies such as large-scale antenna design, broadcast channel beam scanning, control channel coverage enhancement, and high-power terminals.

-High-speed mobile: For specific scenarios such as high-speed rail, suppress the effects of fast channel time, large frequency offset, and frequent handovers in 500km/h high-speed scenarios. Rel-15 ensures high-speed mobile performance through technologies such as reference signal design, random access process design, and system parameter optimization.

The second version of the 5G standard (Rel-16) has continuously optimized and improved the performance and capabilities of the 5G network, and expanded to support wider vertical industry applications. The first is to solve the individualized problems of 5G networks, such as interference management of 5G remote base stations, high-frequency wireless backhaul (IAB), large-scale antenna enhancement, and reduction of terminal power consumption; the second is to enhance vertical industry applications, such as low-frequency The Internet of Things with low cost and medium and high speed will further enhance the applications of V2X, URLLC and IIoT; the third is to deeply tap the potential of 5G network capabilities, including new capabilities such as 5G air interface positioning, big data collection and application. Capability enhancements related to vertical industry empowerment include the following:

- Achieve meter-level positioning (outdoor horizontal positioning accuracy of 10m, indoor horizontal positioning accuracy of 3m), and combine with satellite, Bluetooth, sensors and other technologies to further achieve sub-meter-level positioning;

- Through the terminal energy saving and prolonging the battery working time, it can save about 35% of the air interface energy consumption and about 11% of the whole machine energy consumption under medium business load;

-In terms of mobility enhancement, the "0" ms scheme can avoid data interruption on the user plane during handover and ensure consistent rate experience for the UE during the handover process, while the robustness enhancement scheme based on conditional handover can improve the robustness of the control plane to improve the success rate of handover;

-URLLC enhancement, while meeting the air interface low latency requirements (such as 0.5-1ms), adding support for larger data rates, increasing the end-to-end reliability from 99.999% to 99.9999%;

-5G Internet of Vehicles V2X, meeting the requirements of 3-10ms end-to-end delay, 99.999% reliability, and high speed of 10-1000 Mbps, realizing the complementary coexistence of 5G V2X and LTE V2X Internet of Vehicles;

-Air-space-ground integrated communication, laying a solid foundation for the follow-up research on key technologies of the 5G-oriented air-space-ground integrated interconnection network.

In general, the evolution of Rel-16 technology will help to further improve the quality of 5G network services, enhance user experience, expand the scale of the 5G industry, and better enable the transformation and capability upgrade of all walks of life.

The 5G Rel-17 standard will introduce further capability enhancements for vertical industry applications, such as V2X enhancement of the Internet of Vehicles, industrial Internet IIoT enhancement, air interface positioning capability enhancement, NTN air-space integrated communication, etc.; on the other hand, the Rel-17 standard will also consider Some new functions are added to meet new requirements in new scenarios, making 5G network functions more complete and network performance more robust, such as large-scale Internet of Things (mMTC) solutions that support higher rate requirements, and NR design with an order of magnitude. , simplified Multicast Broadcast Transport (MBMS), wireless network slicing enhancements, public safety, and more.

In a word, it can be seen from the standard development of 5G new air interface that the 5G system's support for vertical industries is being continuously improved and enhanced, and will be able to better support the combination of 5G and vertical industry applications.

2.2 Serving and Network Slicing [2]

The traditional 4G network is a network with a solid structure, and all functions are readily available. However, for differentiated enterprise-level and vertical industry applications, the requirements for network functions are very different. Using this traditional large and comprehensive network construction method will inevitably lead to a huge waste of resources, and due to the solidified network structure, it is impossible to Necessary optimization of delay and routing topology is required, which is difficult to meet personalized service expansion requirements.

The 5G network supports end-to-end slicing capabilities and on-demand location deployment of capabilities through disruptive designs such as functional decoupling modular design, separation of control and bearer, invocation of functions as services, and underlying cloudification. Customized, open and service-oriented. The service-oriented architecture makes the deployment of services and functions very flexible. The core network based on the SDN/NFV[3][4] platform enables flexible deployment of network functions and elastic scaling of capacity as needed.