DUBAI, UAE, Oct. 13, 2023 - At the 2023 Global Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF 2023), Cao Ming, President of Wireless Solution at Huawei, launched the industry's first full-series solutions for 5.5G. At the ceremony, Cao mentioned that "5.5G is well timed to support new experiences, connections, and services", highlighting that "Huawei's full-series 5.5G solutions will help operators deliver full-scenario tenfold capabilities and enable ultra-high energy efficiency, spectrum utilization, and O&M efficiency."
5.5G Arrives in Time to Upgrade Mobile Connections
5G has undergone commercial expansion for over four years, developing much faster than previous mobile technologies. Scaled 5G adoption creates new momentum for the growth of the digital economy. 5G is driving a large variety of new experiences, connections, and services. 5G has opened the door to an immersive world for individual and home users. It has extended IoT connections into all scenarios, and has found its way to core production, empowering flexible production, all while accelerating vehicle to everything (V2X) services that drive smart transport.
5.5G has arrived just in time to upgrade the connections of people, homes, things, vehicles and industries. Huawei's full-series 5.5G solutions can help operators efficiently build 5.5G networks thanks to continuous innovations across five categories of basic capabilities: broadband, multi-band, multi-antenna, intelligent, and green.
Full-Series 5.5G Products Deliver Tenfold Capabilities
TDD multi-band multi-channel ELAA for 10 Gbps experiences. Extremely large antenna array (ELAA) has helped commercial 5G networks noticeably boost TDD coverage and energy efficiency. As telecom moves to 5.5G, ELAA is further upgraded. Based on the new ELAA, the industry's first 128T MetaAAU that integrates over 500 antenna elements can work with multidimensional high-resolution beam algorithms to improve experience by 50%. With the ELAA upgrade, the industry's first dual-band 64T MetaAAU can work with dual-band converged elements to enable the co-coverage between high and low bands, delivering unrivaled 5 to 10 Gbps experiences together with multi-carrier solutions.
FDD full-series GigaGreen to upgrade basic experiences. The industry's first FDD triple-band Massive MIMO and triple-band 8T modules support GHz-level bandwidth, enabling 1.8+2.1+2.6 GHz in one box, and can work with FDD beamforming to greatly improve FDD spectral and energy efficiencies. Compared with 4T4R, FDD triple-band Massive MIMO boosts capacity by 10 times and coverage by 10 dB. FDD triple-band 8T8R improves spectral efficiency by three times and coverage by 7 dB when working with true wideband and dynamic power sharing.
mmWave AAU with the largest antenna array for continuous 10 Gbps coverage. The mmWave industry has progressed to maturity. The industry's first mmWave AAU embodies more than 2,000 antenna elements to overcome the limitations of mmWave on co-site co-coverage with C-band. Through the coordination between high and low bands, mmWave networks can deliver a peak throughput of 10 Gbps, with an average at 5 Gbps. This AAU also supports intelligent beam management, breaking the limitation of mmWave regarding high-speed mobility and NLOS transmission.
DIS improvement in performance and energy saving to bring 5.5G indoors. LampSite X series integrates five bands and mmWave in one box to support full bandwidth across all bands for all radio access technologies. It also supports super deep dormancy to reduce off-peak power consumption to only 1 Watt. To ensure the coverage required by underground parking areas and other similar areas, the unique multi-band medium-power LightSite module can ensure a 35% better user experience and lower TCO than common DAS solutions.
Ongoing antenna and microwave innovation for efficient 5.5G construction. Green antennas leverage direct injection feeding (SDIF) to redefine antenna architecture and Meta Lens to aggregate beam energy for a 25% higher energy efficiency. Microwave has a new platform MAGICSwave to upgrade transport networks. MAGICSwave supports ultra-wide multi-channel transmission to boost backhaul efficiency, with higher capacity for urban areas and longer transmission distance for suburban areas. It features a high level of integration, enabling networks to sustain evolution over the coming 10 years.
Efficient, Intelligent 5.5G Ensures Optimal Network Efficiencies
iHashBand2.0 spectrum pooling for optimal 5.5G spectral efficiency. iHashBand2.0 redefines multi-band spectrum usage: Serving cell (MB-SC) enables discontinuous spectrum to be flexibly combined for virtual large bandwidth, making 10 Gbps possible while achieving a 40% higher spectral efficiency. Flexible spectrum access (FSA) supports flexible full uplink band access, bringing uplink to Gbps with a 40% higher spectral efficiency.
Full-scenario "0 Bit 0 Watt" for optimal 5.5G energy efficiency. The full-series equipment supports "0 Bit 0 Watt", becoming the first in the industry to support super deep dormancy with a 99% shutdown depth, on-demand fast wakeup, and millisecond-level shutdown at both the carrier and channel levels. The site solutions realize intelligent coordination between power supplies and equipment, ensuring "0 Bit 0 Watt" at site level. With iPowerStar, site-specific energy saving policies can be implemented based on traffic trends at different times of day, helping realize "0 Bit 0 Watt" at network level.
IntelligentRAN towards L4 for optimal 5.5G O&M. Networks will depend on more bands to provide more services and connections, justifying the trends of 5.5G to advance to high-level autonomy. IntelligentRAN supports L4 intent-based intelligence. This means that prevention and prediction are possible to replace reactive network O&M with proactive methods, networks are aware of service intents to deliver better deterministic experiences, and multi-objective decision-making is supported to optimize service experience and network energy efficiency.
"The future has come. Huawei will continue to develop innovative products and solutions in collaboration with all industry partners to bring 5.5G into reality," ended Cao.
