On September 23, the 19th Asian Games will open in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, 13,000 sportsmen and women will compete for more than 480 gold medals in the Asian Games.
The first 5G-A naked-eye 3D service, the world’s first 5G-A high-quality routes and so on.
On the eve of the commercialization of 5G-A, the Asian Games has become the best stage to demonstrate the revolutionary capabilities of 5G-A.
“The industry will usher in the 5G-A era in 2024.” Du Yeqing, Huawei’s chief wireless expert in China, said.
Driving the accelerated commercialization of 5G-A
The development of 5G has taken shape in four years, with 4.2 million 5G sites built globally, of which 3.05 million 5G sites are in China; global 5G users have exceeded 1 billion, of which more than 600 million 5G users are in China.
In the 5G-A era, can China maintain a leading position? China’s industrial chain is pushing 5G-A from industrial consensus to accelerated commercialization.
On September 11, 2023, Huawei took the lead in completing all functional test cases of 5G-A under the organization of IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group. The test covered key 5G-A technologies for upstream and downstream ultra-wideband and broadband real-time interaction.
“Huawei has fully completed the testing of key technologies such as 5G-A functions and performance.” Zhu Xiaodan, vice president of marketing for Huawei’s wireless network product line, told IT Times.
5G-A (5G-Advanced) as the evolution and enhancement of 5G, the connection rate and delay and other network capabilities to achieve a 10-fold increase, the main six major enhancements: downstream 10 megabit, upstream gigabit, one hundred billion links, low-latency high-reliability, millimeter-level positioning, and transform into a “hexagonal warrior”. In addition to the deterministic capabilities of connection rate, latency and high reliability, 5G-A has three other revolutionary capabilities: passive sensing, passive IoT and endogenous intelligence.
“5G-A is based on the evolution and enhancement of 5G, and is the path to 6G. On the one hand, 5G-A effectively supports the scale growth of 5G applications and the development of digital innovation; on the other hand, 5G-A, as a necessary path to 6G, will validate a portion of the key 6G technologies in advance, accumulating important experience for the development of 6G standards and the landing of technologies.” Zhu Xiaodan said as follows.
The first version of 5G-A, R18, will be frozen in the first half of 2024, and the industry chain is accelerating its pre-commercial preparations from networks, terminals to applications. Huawei expects the industry to usher in the 5G-A era in 2024.
Du Yeqing also summarized the five major trends of 5G-A: in the future, 5G-A will move towards immersive interactive experience in “connecting people”, towards full-scene connectivity in “connecting things”, and towards core production links in “connecting industries”. In the future, 5G-A will move towards immersive interactive experience in “connecting people”, full-scene connectivity in “connecting things”, core production in “connecting industries”, high-reliability intelligent transportation in “connecting vehicles”, and ultra-high-definition 3D screens in “connecting families”, empowering the transformation and upgrading of the whole industry.
5G-A terminals and explosive applications are gradually maturing
The most important part of the maturity of the 5G-A industry is the maturity of terminals. At present, computers and PADs supporting 5G-A applications are already on the market.
According to Luo Zinan, senior product manager of Acer China, Acer is currently launching naked eye 3D products covering a variety of forms, such as creation books, game books, monitors, etc., which are widely used in the fields of graphic design, gaming, medical care, education and so on.
Terminals alone without applications can’t put 5G-A on the fast track. Currently, naked eye 3D, XR is the most obvious C-end user perception of 5G-A burst application, because these two applications on the downlink rate requirements are extremely high, and 5G-A can provide 10Gbps downlink rate, 1Gbps uplink rate of the ultra-large bandwidth capacity just can support.
The IT Times reporter made a special trip to experience the computer and PAD supporting naked eye 3D in a moving car, even at high speeds, it is not easy to produce a sense of vertigo, especially naked eye 3D games, so that people have a more immersive feeling. During the Asian Games, viewers will also be able to watch the games in 3D. After transcoding in the cloud, 2D live video can be converted into 3D content in real time, with no significant delay under 5G-A plus.
This was possible due to the deployment of 5G-A base stations along the route.
On September 14, nine days before the countdown to the Hangzhou Asian Games, IT Times experienced a 5G-A 10Gbps route: starting from Zhejiang Mobile Company, the route passed through the Boao Tunnel, Guanlan Road, Fengbei Road, and Pinglan Road, and along the way, it demonstrated 5G-A’s pilots of low-altitude passive sensing, road passive sensing, and passive IOT in logistics.
Guanlan Road has become one of the world’s “fastest” roads, a scenic road connecting the Olympic Sports Center and the Asian Games Village, with 13 5G-A sites along the road, the first in the world to realize the deployment of 10 Gigabit networks, with peak wireless network speeds of more than 10 Gbps, and network speeds of more than 5 Gbps in the mobile state, reaching the 5G-A network speed standard. The 5G-A network speed standard, which is ten times higher than the 5G rate, can meet the higher demand for network of C-end applications such as naked eye 3D and XR cloud game.
For the B-side, 5G-A passive IOT has the characteristics of low cost, self-supply, wide applicability, green and low-carbon, enabling hundreds of billions of connections in warehouse inventory, production line digitization, logistics tracking and other scenarios.
In the Asian Games Village, Yuantong Logistics adopts 5G-A passive IOT technology with the support of its partners to realize remote automatic inspection and real-time scheduling and management of logistics vehicles, so as to ensure the safe and efficient operation of Asian Games material transportation.
Zhao Weiwei, head of operation of Yuantong’s Asian Games Village logistics service guarantee group, introduced that through the automatic inspection of 5G network, the battery surface temperature of every logistics vehicle in the Asian Games Village can be monitored in real time at the minute level. These data are not only reported at a frequency of minute level, but can also be presented directly on the big screen for real-time monitoring and management by staff.
How to protect the Asian Games major events site network smooth, and carry the opening and closing ceremonies 100,000 people at the same time the ultimate challenge of the Internet? Network intelligence technology comes in handy.
In the 48 competition venues of the Hangzhou Asian Games, Zhejiang Mobile joined hands with Huawei’s intelligent heavy security solution based on digital twins and AI, predicted network hazards with high precision, and shortened the inspection time of the server room from 30 minutes to 10 minutes using AR technology. The venue presents real-time network posture, real-time perception and response to network emergencies, combined with indoor environment positioning technology, cell phones automatically find hidden equipment, combined with AR technology to visualize the root cause of the fault, troubleshooting efficiency by 50%.
The next step in the development of 5G will usher in the era of 10,000 trillion, and 5G-A will move from the Asian Games to every corner of life.