At the Huawei Global Analyst Summit (HAS), Cullen Xu, Vice President of Huawei 5G & LTE TDD Product Line, gave a keynote speech entitled ” High-Bandwidth Massive MIMO Is the Core for Building High-quality 5G Networks”. Cullen Xu said: “The maturity of the 5G industry accelerates the commercial deployment of 5G. As 5G commercial deployment enters a new stage, users’ requirements for experience and services continue to increase, the trend of 5G high-quality network construction is significant to operators. We believe that high-bandwidth Massive MIMO is the key to delivering ultimate network performance and is the core of operators’ 5G high-quality networks.
User behavior changes bring higher requirements on 5G network quality
HD video is a new direction, variable speed playback requires higher network speed. Globally, video services account for 70% of the total mobile traffic, which is the most important service type in mobile scenarios. HD video traffic accounts for 55% of the total mobile video traffic. HD video requires higher traffic. For example, HDR video caching increases the network rate by 2.6 times. According to user behavior, more than 28% of video users are used to variable speed playback. For example, the network speed is doubled for video playback at double speeds. The continuous development of new video services, such as panoramic video and VR video, also raises higher requirements on network capabilities. In addition, HD video services in home scenarios are also becoming a trend, which continuously increases the requirements for traffic and network rate. Currently, carriers around the world have deployed more than 90 5G wireless home broadband access (FWA) networks. By the end of 2021, the number of FWA subscribers worldwide has exceeded 3 million, and the average DOU of FWA has increased by three times compared with that of 4G.
High-quality networks are the trend of operators’ 5G construction
According to the 5G evaluation report of a third-party evaluation organization worldwide, operators’ network quality is improving continuously. Take RootMetrics’ 5G network performance test results in Seoul, South Korea as an example. The median downlink network experience of LGU+, the top operator in the performance test, has increased from 476 Mbit/s in 2020 to 640 Mbit/s in 2021, network experience is greatly improved. The improvement of network quality promotes the continuous development of evaluation standards. According to the global P3 test report, in addition to traditional rate experience tests, network coverage and service experience (such as HD video and voice quality) are also included in the 5G network evaluation system. OpenSignal also incorporates network coverage indicators into the 5G network evaluation system, such as the 5G duration camping ratio and 5G network grid camping ratio. High-quality networks are becoming a trend for operators to build 5G networks, which also drives the continuous improvement of third-party 5G evaluation standards. The 5G experience evaluation benchmark is higher and the 5G network performance evaluation dimensions are wider.
High-bandwidth Massive MIMO is the core of 5G high-quality networks
The recent three years of 5G commercial deployment has proved that multi-antenna and High-bandwidth technologies realized cross-generational user experience and have become the choice of most operators around the world. 64T Massive MIMO delivers ultimate network performance and is the first choice for TDD network deployment by global operators. Compared with 32T Massive MIMO, 64T Massive MIMO significantly improves experience, capacity, and coverage. In addition, in vertical coverage, large inter-site distance, and indoor scenarios, 64T Massive MIMO also brings significant gains and benefits to commercial 5G network performance. For example, in Seoul, South Korea, 64-assisive MIMO is used to replace 32T Massive MIMO in commercial networks, improving the in-depth experience of high-rise buildings by over 30%. In large-site distance scenarios, the 100 Mbit/s satisfaction ratio of 6T Massive MIMO with LTE 1:1 deployment can reach 95%, which is 5% higher than that of 32T Massive MIMO. In Saudi Arabia indoor scenarios, thick walls bring experience challenges. Compared with 32T Massive MIMO, 6T Massive MIMO improves coverage by 3 dB, improving indoor experience by 2.8 times and achieving a rate of 267 Mbit/s.
Continuous innovation and breakthrough in High-bandwidth and multi-antenna technologies, and MetaAAU improves performance and energy saving
Huawei’s MetaAAU product introduces the ELAA (Extremely large antenna array) and the innovative AHR Turbo solution to achieve massive MIMO coverage and energy efficiency breakthroughs. Compared with the traditional AAU 192 array, the ultra-large-scale antenna array uses 384 antenna arrays. In addition, technologies such as ultra-light integrated array and SDIF are introduced to improve coverage and integration. Currently, this product has been commercially tested in multiple cities of three major operators in China. Compared with the traditional 64T AAU, MetaAAU provides 3 dB coverage improvement and 30% user downlink experience improvement. When the cell edge coverage KPIs remain unchanged, the eNodeB can be configured with a lower transmit power to reduce the base station power consumption. Compared with the traditional AAU, the power consumption is reduced by about 30%.
Intelligence enables multi-frequency and multi-site coordination to build a Massive MIMO network with optimal performance
In the face of increasing complexity of networks, intelligence has become an inevitable choice in the 5G era. By applying intelligent algorithms, the channel modeling, scheduling dictionary, and smart grid are constructed based on MAE and site data. Based on the policy library, the base station can achieve more accurate beamforming in single-site single-frequency scenarios. In multi-frequency scenarios, the base station can select the optimal band to achieve ultimate user experience. MAE on the network side predicts the coverage of multiple sites through smart grids, optimizes beam coverage, and locks the optimal beam combination to improve network coverage. In addition, MAE on the network side can perform joint modeling on KPI data of tens of thousands of cells in an area to generate differentiated parameter models that match the characteristics of each cell, improving user experience.
The 5G high-bandwidth and multi-antenna technologies have been widely used around the world. Huawei will continue to innovate in this track and work with global industry partners to build high-quality 5G networks.
