On June 6, 2019, China's 5G license was officially issued, and the domestic 5G era began. Now that three years have passed, the world has begun to discuss the direction of 5G evolution again.

In April 2021, the 46th PCG (Project Cooperation Group) meeting was held, and 3GPP officially identified the name of 5G evolution as 5G-Advanced. At the same time, the meeting decided that 5G-Advanced will start from R18. It is reported that the R18 version will be approved by the end of 2022, and the standard is expected to be frozen by the end of 2023. Since then, the second half of the 5G era has begun.

5G Advanced presses the button for the second half of the 5G era

As of the end of May this year, my country has built more than 1.6 million 5G base stations, and 5G signals cover all prefectures, cities, counties, urban areas and 87% of townships and towns across the country. The total number of 5G mobile phone users exceeds 413 million, which is a typical 5G model with commercial value. The application scenarios have covered 40 of the 97 categories of the national economy, and the cumulative number of 5G application cases has exceeded 20,000.

In December 2021, 3GPP identified the first batch of projects for Rel-18, the first standard version of 5G-Advanced. The first batch of 28 topics covered the continuous evolution of 5G-Advanced in various fields.

To put it simply, 5G-Advanced, as an upgraded version of 5G, will provide ubiquitous 10 Gigabit experience and 100 billion connection capabilities, and stimulate the new potential of 5G in terms of continuous enhancement of broadband.

It is understood that the evolution of 5G standards can be divided into two stages: the functional freeze of Rel-17 also represents the successful completion of the first stage of 5G evolution. The second stage includes three versions: Rel-18, Rel-19, and Rel-20. The start of Rel-18 marks the official entry into the standard formulation stage of 5G Advanced.

Plus, Rel-18 is just the beginning of 5G Advanced. Artificial intelligence, full-duplex, green and energy-saving networks, XR, 5G IoT for wearable devices, 5G satellite communications, 5G Internet of Vehicles and direct-connect communications, and enhanced broadband service enhancements for smart terminals will all be available at Rel-19 and continued evolution in subsequent standard specifications.

At present, the first phase of the 5G standard has come to an end, and from the future-oriented 5G Advanced to 6G, 5G still has a long-term and clear technological evolution route.

5G-Advanced enters a new stage of industrial construction

On June 6, China Mobile and industry partners jointly released the world's first batch of 5G-Advanced end-to-end industry models and the "5G-Advanced New Capabilities and Industry Development White Paper", marking the deep integration of the 5G-Advanced innovation chain and industry chain, promoting 5G-Advanced has entered a new stage of industrial construction.

Ding Haiyu, vice president of China Mobile Research Institute, said that through 5G-A's three major directions of "excellent network", "intelligent life, smart simplicity" and "low carbon and high efficiency" and ten key technologies, 5G-A will support downlink 10Gbps peak rate, uplink 1Gbps peak rate, millisecond-level latency, low-cost 100 billion IoT, and capabilities beyond connection such as perception and high-precision positioning.

Facing the evolution of 5G-Advanced technology, China Unicom completed and released the flexible air interface (CUBE-FLEXAIR) 3.0 technical white paper as early as March 2021. The evolution concept and the six major technical routes of "ubiquitous connection", "ubiquitous connection", "experience determination", "intelligent autonomy", "green to simplicity", and "cloud-based openness" have formulated the 5G-Advanced technology evolution path.

In May of this year, China Telecom and Huawei also jointly released the super time-frequency folding 5G-Advanced innovative technology. It is understood that "Super Time-Frequency Folding", as the latest member of the Super Series innovative technology family, simulates the FDD air interface through TDD dual-carrier uplink and downlink time domain complementarity, and perfectly integrates the advantages of TDD's large bandwidth and the "0-wait" delay advantage of FDD air interface. Moreover, based on the 3.5GHz frequency band, the super time-frequency folded uplink equivalent bandwidth is up to 100MHz, which can achieve a peak uplink rate of over 1Gbps, while reducing the end-to-end delay from 10ms to less than 4ms. In the future, based on the millimeter wave frequency band, it can be Further reduce the delay to less than 1ms.

Of course, there is a long-term and clear technological evolution route for 5G in the future. The application of 5G-Advanced technology requires the support of operators and equipment, chips, and terminal manufacturers, and requires the joint efforts of the entire industry chain. Wen Ku, vice-chairman and secretary-general of the China Communications Standards Association, also said that in the follow-up technology industry and application development process, the industry needs to work together to comprehensively deploy technical standards and application industries to promote industrial development in an orderly manner:

• The first is to form a consensus, uphold the concept of openness, cooperation, mutual benefit and win-win to guide the formulation of standards, and further strengthen international cooperation in the evolution of 5G technology;
• The second is to focus on demand, work together to break through innovation, evolve to 5G-Advanced, carry out 5G enhanced technical standards, equipment research and development, and test key problems, maintain the advanced nature of the network, and continue to maintain a leading position in global competitiveness;
• The third is to accelerate the transformation, promote the deep integration of technology and industry, improve the adaptability of 5G vertical industry applications, and solve the urgent development needs of 5G frequency re-farming, reuse, expansion, and coverage enhancement. It is recommended to consider and plan 6GHz and other ultra-high bandwidth spectrum for 5G-Advanced to accelerate the implementation of 5G applications.