MWC 2023 conference is about to be held, and the 5G Advanced industry has another big news! On February 15, Qualcomm announced the launch of the world's first 5G Advanced-ready baseband chip - Snapdragon® X75 5G modem and radio frequency system, which supports millimeter wave and Sub-6GHz frequency bands, bringing network coverage, latency, energy efficiency and mobility. Waiting for all-round improvements, we must set a new benchmark for smartphone connectivity.

As we all know, 5G Advanced is the next stage of 5G technology evolution. Its most significant feature is that it can bring ten times the current network capabilities, such as increasing the download rate of mobile users from Gbps to 10Gbps to support XR Pro and Yuan. Ultra-wideband real-time interactive applications like the universe . In addition, 5G Advanced also has features such as supporting Gigabit uplink and Gigabit IoT, fully meeting the needs of various industries for a leap in experience and deepening digital and intelligent transformation.

Everyone in the industry knows that when networks develop, terminals go first. The release of 5G Advanced-ready chips means that the development of the 5G Advanced terminal industry will accelerate in an all-round way, thereby accelerating the scale development of 5G Advanced networks. Especially considering that Qualcomm announced that "Snapdragon X75 is currently sampling, and commercial terminals are expected to be released in the second half of 2023." The industry had previously expected that 5G Advanced networks would be commercially available as soon as 2024.

It is also worth noting that the 5G Advanced-ready chip released by Qualcomm not only supports a faster mobile phone connection experience, but also provides services for vertical industries (automotive, PC and industrial Internet of Things) and FWA (fixed wireless access) scenarios , which means that terminal manufacturers in the individual, industry and home markets will benefit from it, boosting the overall accelerated development of the entire 5G Advanced industry ecosystem.

Continuing evolution, 5G Advanced technical standards achieve breakthroughs

The wireless industry has developed in an orderly and vigorous manner over the past 30 years. The key reason behind this is vision guidance and continuous iteration. From 1G to 5G, the wireless industry basically follows the development pattern of one generation per decade, and continues to evolve in each major generation. 5G Advanced is the product of the continuous evolution of 5G under this pattern.

In 2020, the 5.5G industry vision of 5G evolution was proposed by the industry for the first time. In April 2021, 3GPP officially determined the name of 5G evolution as 5G-Advanced, started the standardization process, and planned to define 5G-Advanced technical specifications through three versions: R18, R19, and R20. At the end of 2021, the first batch of 28 R18 projects was approved, and 5.5G technology research and standardization entered a substantive stage. Future R19 and R20 versions will further explore new 5.5G services and architecture.

With the common vision of the industry, 5G-Advanced has basically formed key capabilities and features such as 10Gbps downlink, 1Gbps uplink, millisecond-level latency, 100 billion connections, and integrated communication perception for 2025, bringing ten times the current The network capabilities greatly improve the user experience in various scenarios. Over the past two years, the industry has done a lot of work in 5G Advanced technology innovation and has achieved key breakthroughs in multiple technical standards.

Among them, industry pioneers have made significant progress in terms of the most representative downlink 10Gbps target network characteristics of 5G Advanced.

At the end of December 2022, China Mobile and industry partners released the 5G-Advanced dual-chain integration yearbook, showing the industry's first batch of 5G-Advanced end-to-end industry models jointly created by multiple parties. Among them, in terms of XR business, China Mobile, Huawei and Migu jointly completed the industry's first "X-Layer cross-layer integration" technology terminal, network and cloud industry four-in-one industrial trial. Test results show that a 100M bandwidth single sector based on China Mobile's 4.9GHz frequency band can support 20 XR terminal systems at the same time, increasing the capacity by 5 times, and can deeply empower XR and future Metaverse 10Gbps and millisecond-level low latency requirements.

In addition, industry pioneers have also actively explored and achieved fruitful results in terms of 5G Advanced target network features such as 1Gbps uplink, 100 billion connections, and integrated synaesthesia.

In May 2022, China Telecom and Huawei took the lead in demonstrating the laboratory test verification results of the "super time-frequency folding" 5G-Advanced innovative technology. Based on the 3.5GHz frequency band test, this technology has an uplink equivalent bandwidth of up to 100MHz and can achieve an uplink peak rate of more than 1Gbps. At the same time, it reduces the end-to-end delay from 10ms to less than 4ms, fully satisfying the core requirements of remote control, machine collaboration, etc. The production process has strict requirements for large network bandwidth, low latency, and reliability.

Also in May 2022, China Unicom held a press conference on technological innovation and practical results, worked with industry partners to jointly release 5G evolution innovation results and officially launched a technological innovation industry cooperation plan. Among them, in the field of smart super-sensing, China Unicom has achieved a 1-kilometer sensing distance and sub-meter-level sensing accuracy based on base stations in the direction of communication sensing integration, and achieved an air interface delay of 4ms in the URLLC direction, and at the same time, 99.999% of the delay is stable. sex.

At the same time, under the guidance of the IMT-2020 (5G) promotion group, equipment vendors represented by Huawei actively participated in the testing and verification of 5G enhancement technology, and have successively completed high-precision timing, 5G LAN, 5G synaesthesia integration, and 5G medium-high-speed matter. Networking (RedCap), millimeter wave FR-only networking, low latency and high reliability (URLLC) and other test verifications continue to enrich 5G enhanced technical capabilities. 

Terminals are ready to help accelerate the development of the 5G Advanced industry

Judging from the development experience of 3G, 4G and 5G, in the era of mobile Internet where experience is king, operators' network leadership cannot be separated from the rapid progress of network construction and advance planning of terminal layout. The industry currently agrees that 5G-Advanced has entered a new stage of development after nearly three years of advancement. It is time to prepare products and jointly mature the end-die industry chain.

In order to match the characteristics of the 5G Advanced target network represented by downstream 10Gbps, the industry generally believes that 5G-Advanced chips and smart terminals need to move towards 3T8R or even more channels and support carrier aggregation of more than 4 carriers to create 10G experience terminals to fully Release 10G capabilities to meet the needs of future businesses such as XR and Metaverse.

The 5G Advanced-ready baseband chip released by Qualcomm has been reflected in these aspects. For example, its products for mobile scenarios use ten carrier aggregation in the millimeter wave band, and support five downlink carrier aggregation, FDD uplink MIMO, etc. in the Sub-6GHz band, which can achieve excellent spectrum aggregation and capacity performance; products for FWA scenarios not only support millimeter Wave, Sub-6GHz, and also supports Wi-Fi 7 and 10Gb Ethernet capabilities, which can achieve the peak network rate.

Referring to the development history of 5G, we can find that global operators, including China's three major operators, have adopted a terminal-first strategy, including but not limited to stimulating the rapid development of the terminal industry in terms of technical standards, product research and development, and ecological construction, so as to allow advanced networks to Resonates with a variety of terminals at the same frequency. Needless to say, the more advanced 5G Advanced network also needs to take corresponding measures to promote the readiness of 5G baseband chips to empower various smart terminals such as mobile phones, cars, AR/VR, and CPE.

ABI Research predicts that the migration to 5G-Advanced will reshape the mobile and wearable device markets. 4.9 million 5G-Advanced compatible mobile devices will be shipped in 2024, rising to 242.9 million units in 2026. It will reach 481.9 million units in 2027. The rapid increase in the number of 5G-Advanced terminal equipment will surely help the scale development of 5G Advanced networks and create a prosperous 5G Advanced industry ecosystem.

On the network equipment side that corresponds to user terminals, as the industry collaborates to make great progress in 5G Advanced standards, spectrum, technology, etc., we can see ultra-large bandwidth, ELAA-MM, uplink and downlink decoupling, and multi-frequency integration. , RedCap, NB-IoT, Passive IoT and other technical fields are constantly making innovations and breakthroughs, gradually gathering the comprehensive capabilities required to build 5G Advanced networks, which can help operators match the capabilities of networks and terminals, and lead the development of the 5G Advanced industry. Maximize the capabilities of advanced networks.

It is reported that at the upcoming MWC 2023 conference in Barcelona, ​​5G Advanced will also be one of the key topics, and many industry giants will take the stage to share the latest progress of 5G Advanced. I believe that as long as global industry chain partners continue to innovate around 5G Advanced standards, spectrum, products, ecology, applications, etc., and build an industrial ecosystem with an open, cooperative, and win-win mentality, we will soon see the arrival of more advanced 5.5G!