5G E2E Solutions Tailored to Your Needs
Release Date：2018-02-05
By Duan Xiaowei
As 5G standards and field tests develop rapidly, 5G has undoubtedly become the hottest topic in the mobile communication industry. Compared with 4G, 5G not only increases access rates but also enables mobile communication to be more closely connected to vertical industries and human production and life. 5G will lay a solid foundation for the coming of the IoT digital society.
In commercial 5G deployment, the completeness and maturity of 5G solutions that vendors offer will have a significant impact on the overall performance of 5G networks and long-term development of operators. Although operators do not always purchase an end-to-end (E2E) 5G system from a vendor, the capability of offering an E2E solution helps the vendor more deeply understand 5G network requirements and provide more competitive 5G solutions to meet operators’ business needs.
5G E2E Solutions
ZTE, a pioneer in 5G innovation, is committed to providing the most competitive 5G end-to-end solutions for global mobile operators, based on its powerful R&D capability. The company strives to work closely with its strategic partners in the first wave of 5G commercialization, aiming to jointly promote the development of the 5G industry chain and accelerate the process of 5G commercialization.
In the 5G RAN part, ZTE has developed a series of 5G RF modules covering 26 GHz and 28 GHz millimeter wave (MMW) and mainstream candidate 5G bands such as 3.5 GHz, 4.5 GHz, and below 1 GHz. The baseband platform based on virtualized architecture supports flexible deployment of 5G centralized units (CUs) and distributed units (DUs). Moreover, ZTE has led the research and commercial use of key 5G Massive MIMO technology.
In the 5G transport part, ZTE’s Flexhaul solution not only handles hybrid access of front-haul, mid-haul, and back-haul flexibly but also meets the requirement of on-demand connections among data centers after network functions are virtualized. With the world-leading FlexE technology, the Flexhaul solution can provide the ultra-high-speed broadband access capability for eMBB services through flexible slicing and deliver ultra-low latency forwarding for delay-sensitive services.
In the 5G core network part, ZTE’s Cloud ServCore solution based on cloud native and micro-service architecture can satisfy the needs of diverse vertical industrial applications through its flexible service orchestration capability, agile development and O&M flow, and on-demand deployment mode. At the SDN NFV World Congress 2017, ZTE won the “Best New Orchestration and Control” award with its Carrier DevOps Builder. The award fully showcases ZTE’s innovation capability and leading position in the SDN/ NFV field.
In the MANO part, the global management and orchestration system schedules and manages 5G RAN, transport, and core network resources in a unified manner, to generate optimal end-to-end network slices for specific vertical industries or service. These network slices are dynamically adjusted and optimized as required by services.
In the Ecosystem part, ZTE is committed to collaborating with partners to build a 5G new ecosystem and is totally involved in the fields covering standard research and collaboration, open source collaboration, operator collaboration, and cooperation with vertical industry. This lays a solid foundation for 5G ecosystem construction, scale commercial deployment, and exploration in 5G business models.
Four Capabilities
5G E2E networks have four outstanding capabilities over 4G networks. The four capabilities are ultra-broadband access, massive IoT connectivity, ultra-reliable low latency, and E2E network slicing.
Ultra-Broadband Access
Ultra-broadband access is the earliest 5G application scenario and also the focus of operators nowadays. With its rich experience in the wireless communication field, ZTE has achieved excellent performance in the national Phase-2 and 5G field tests conducted by China Mobile. The peak cell throughput in the eMBB scenario exceeds 19 Gbps, and the peak rate of a single user exceeds 2 Gbps using 200 MHz bandwidth at the 3.5 GHz band.
Massive IoT Connectivity
IoT is another important 5G application scenario besides eMBB, and also a major source of operator revenue in the future. The fast maturity and scale deployment of NB-IoT delays to some extent the operator requirements for 5G IoT access capabilities. However, with the rapid development of IoT applications, the number of IoT connected terminals in the 5G era will far exceed the access capability of NB-IoT. With the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technologies such as multi-user shared access (MUSA), 5G can increase the number of low-speed wide-area IoT connections to over 2 million per cell.
Ultra-Reliable Low Latency
Ultra-reliable low latency communication is the basis for mission critical applications including automatic drive, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), tactile internet, and industrial control. It is also one of the core capabilities that distinguish 5G from 4G. In China’s national Phase-2 test, ZTE demonstrated the air interface capability with an ultra-low latency of 0.42 ms. Assisted by the Flexhaul ultra-low latency forwarding technology and mobile edge computing architecture, ZTE can provide the most competitive E2E ultra-low latency solution in the industry.
E2E Network Slicing
Network slicing enables operators to sell network services and capabilities by the slice as required. This helps operators introduce innovative services and improve their network value. ZTE’s 5G network slicing supports end-to-end (covering wireless, transport and core network) on-demand orchestration and management, and also supports logical and secure isolation among network slices. To date, ZTE has successfully completed 5G network slicing verification tests with China Mobile, Telefonica, and China Telecom.
Benefits
ZTE has launched 5G E2E solutions that can satisfy the needs of the first 5G commercial operators worldwide. It has also made outstanding achievements in 5G key technologies, solution architecture, and product development. For instance, its Massive MIMO is the first to be commercially deployed in the industry, and ZTE has gained rich commercial experience. Its 3.5 GHz 5G NR RF modules are ahead of those made by western vendors in terms of commercialization and network performance. Its virtualized baseband platform can handle the largest 5G NR configuration in the industry and support the convergence of 4G and 5G. Its 5G transport prototype is the first to be launched in the industry, with a node forwarding latency of less than 1 us. Its Carrier DevOps Builder, the 5G core network based on cloud native and micro-service architecture won the “Best New Orchestration and Control” award in the SDN/NFV field.
Moreover, ZTE has actively worked with leading mobile operators such as China Mobile and Softbank to complete the pre-commercial verification of its 5G E2E solutions. ZTE has also established close cooperation with Orange, Telefonica, and Telstra to jointly validate the network performance of 5G E2E solutions and push forward the process of global 5G commercialization.
[Keywords] 5G, E2E solutions, 5G end-to-end
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