Abstract: From June 20 to 22, the 5th Open Source 5G Forum hosted by Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications was held. The reporter learned from the forum that China has become one of the most active regions in the global 5G open source technology and open source community, with the open source 5G alliance. (OSA Asia) was formally established as an opportunity. The commercialization process of China's 5G industry is accelerating. In the next few years, 5G is expected to drive China's direct economic output by one trillion yuan.
From June 20 to 22, the 5th Open Source 5G Forum hosted by Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications was held. The reporter learned from the forum that China has become one of the most active regions in the global 5G open source technology and open source community, with the open source 5G alliance (OSA). Asia) was officially established as an opportunity. The commercialization process of China's 5G industry is accelerating. In the next few years, 5G is expected to drive China's direct economic output by one trillion yuan.
5G standard establishes boosting industry landing
In mid-June, the International Telecommunications Industry Standardization Organization 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) held a plenary meeting to formally approve the freezing of the fifth-generation mobile communication technology standard (5G) independent networking function. At this point, the first phase of the full-featured full version of the 5G standard was officially introduced, and 5G commercials entered the comprehensive sprint phase.
At the moment, 5G has become a hot spot in academia and industry. According to the IEEE (International Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), more than 5,000 research institutions around the world are currently engaged in 5G-related research, and more than 12,000 related papers have been published.
In the industry, starting from 2018, the horn of the 5G scale commercial has already sounded. In the first quarter of this year, the number of operators that started the 5G technology test in the world has reached 134, including 5G business demonstration, 5G technical test and laboratory test, or has been approved and is planning or conducting 5G field test. Among them, 14 operators in 11 countries have promised to launch data services based on 5G networks before the end of the year.
It is predicted that by 2030, 5G is expected to drive China's direct economic output of 6.3 trillion yuan and economic value added of 2.9 trillion yuan. At present, China's three major operators are actively promoting the arrival of the 5G era, in which China Mobile announced that it will build the world's largest 5G trial network in 2018: field testing in five cities: Hangzhou, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Suzhou and Wuhan. Each city will build more than 100 5G base stations; 5G services and application demonstrations will be carried out in 12 cities including Beijing, Chengdu and Shenzhen.
The combination of open source and 5G is gradually becoming a trend
Under the advancement of 5G technology development and commercialization, the combination of open source and 5G has become a trend.
In order to promote the combination of open source and wireless networks, as early as 2014, Eurecom of France initiated the OpenAir Alliance of OSA (OpenAir Interface Software Alliance), relying on the OAI (OpenAirInterface) project to unite related universities, research institutions, operators, equipment vendors and terminal manufacturers. The establishment of an open source community to complete the open source software platform based on the core network, base station and user equipment of the 3GPP cellular network.
According to industry analysts, traditional wireless cellular networks are composed of a large number of dedicated software and hardware components. This approach is not conducive to technological innovation. In today's rapidly changing business needs, it will continue to bring new operators. The cost of business and application deployment. The deployment of open source software on general-purpose processors (such as X86 or ARM) avoids the use of dedicated software and hardware components, decoupling the tight coupling between hardware and software, which simplifies network access, reduces costs, improves deployment flexibility, and supports Technology innovation and accelerated deployment of new services and applications.
At the same time, after years of development, the open source community and open source business model have become more mature. In today's networks, open source has played an important role in many aspects of the network, such as the Android ecosystem on the terminal and the Openstack ecosystem on the cloud infrastructure, which have become an integral part of the network. section. Therefore, deploying open source software in base stations and core networks in cellular networks can better integrate with new technologies such as SDN and NFV, and can also promote the open source ecosystem of various parts of the network, promote technological innovation, and reduce construction and operation costs. .
Open source 5G has received more and more attention. At the 2018 GTI International Industry Summit in Barcelona, China Mobile, together with five major global telecom operators such as AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DOCOMO and Orange, announced the joint establishment of the ORAN (5G Open Intelligent Wireless Network) alliance to promote wireless connectivity. The network has evolved toward a more open and smarter direction, and the Alliance will explore open source solutions for wireless communication networks as one of its main goals. Li Zhengmao, vice president of China Mobile, said that the ORAN concept is proposed to promote the evolution of the wireless access network from the traditional mode to the open intelligence. ORAN will standardize, generalize, open source, and intelligentize wireless networks, thereby significantly reducing network construction costs and operational complexity.
It is worth noting that Facebook has also launched its own Telecom Infrastructure Project (TIP), which aims to provide wireless network connectivity to underdeveloped regions of the world, including Africa, South Asia, etc. The TIP OpenCellular project team is using open source. The platform promotes cost-effective sustainable base station solutions for rural areas. At present, the number of members of the TIP program has exceeded 500. Facebook is trying to bring the open source business model to the telecom equipment market, enabling telecom operators to build infrastructure networks in areas that were previously considered to be restricted areas because of high deployment costs. .
China's 5G industry development must be controlled by people
According to experts, with the development of the OSA Alliance and the ORAN Alliance in the open source 5G field, thanks to the huge market and a large amount of research and development resources, Asia, especially China, has become one of the most active regions in the global 5G open source technology and open source community. .
In this region, operators represented by China Mobile, China Telecom, and Japan Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), equipment manufacturers represented by Nokia, terminal manufacturers represented by TCL, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Japan The universities and research institutions represented by the University of Tokyo have invested a lot of manpower and material resources to jointly promote the construction of open source communities, the development of open source software systems and the industrial application of open source platforms.
In order to further integrate R&D resources and accelerate the development and industrial application of the 5G open source platform, the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications opened up the 5G Sino-French Joint Lab and authorized the OSA Alliance to form OSA Asia, a branch of the OSA Alliance in Asia. OSA Asia was officially announced at the 5th Open Source 5G Forum. Wen Xiangming, Director of the Joint Lab of Open Source 5G of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, served as the chairman of the branch.
Wen Xiangming said: "The ZTE incident has given the communications industry a huge lesson. We hope to use the OSA Asia platform to cultivate a complete open source 5G community, from the hardware to the software, from the base station to the core network. , there are open source platform support, so that we can no longer be subject to people."
It is also known that the open source 5G forum initiated by the OSA Alliance is held twice a year. It is generally held in China in the first half of the year and held in France in the second half of the year. It has developed into an interactive platform for open source 5G academic exchanges, industry discussions, and open source community exchanges. The forum attracted companies including China Mobile, China Telecom, Facebook, Nokia, France Telecom, National Instruments, NTT, TCL, Fujitsu, as well as Tsinghua University, University of Tokyo, Xi'an University of Electronic Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Institute of Technology, etc. Universities and research institutions, a total of 95 units and organizations, 168 researchers and developers participated.
In this forum, 8 units including the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Telecom, Fujitsu, National Instruments, and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications exhibited OAI-based open source 5G RF hardware platform, 5G new air interface, edge computing platform, and C-RAN platform. Wait, and got a lot of attention.
