Don't forget to have a 4.5G when 5G arrives!

Today, 4G has begun to spread, LTE networks are providing smarter applications for smarter applications, including video, voice and Internet access, but it must be said that these applications are still limited to the level of people-to-person connectivity. More and more signs indicate that with the rise of 4K, AR, VR, and even the Internet of Things, existing LTE networks are no longer able to meet the new demands of new services and new terminals. To this end, 4.5G, a new standard in the mobile industry, has entered the commercial field.

Today we will talk about the topic of 4.5G!

4.5G: The key to success!

What is 4.5G? In the 3GPP technical specification, 4.5G is named LTE-Advanced Pro, which is a new construction benchmark for mobile broadband networks. To put it simply, the current 4G network has limited capabilities in terms of speed, application experience, and support for the Internet of Things. 5G will not be able to start commercialization until 2020, so there is a need for a new standard that is up to the next level - 4.5G becomes LTE. The inevitable direction and goal of a system evolution. According to industry forecasts, 2016 will be the year of 4.5G launch of large-scale commercial use, and even in the 5G era, 4.5G will coexist with 5G for a long time. (PS: It should be noted that Huawei is the pioneer of the 4.5G concept. Based on its deep understanding of the development of the wireless industry, Huawei introduced the 4.5G complete concept as early as 2014 and was subsequently recognized by the standards organization.)

Changes brought by 4.5G: speed, experience, and things connected

What changes will 4.5G bring? In fact, this is closely related to the needs of users. With the rapid development of mobile communication technology, various innovative applications have begun to push the way of human social information interaction to new heights, such as high-definition voice and video dual experience, virtual reality (VR), 4K ultra-high definition video, augmented reality (AR) ), driverless, telemedicine, etc., so the network speed and application experience become the key to the 4.5G first upgrade; at the same time, after the basic realization of the connection between people, the connection between objects and things Increasingly, and the amount of access devices will grow geometrically, the capacity of 4.5G base stations and the number of devices that can be supported must also be greatly increased. Below we will specifically say:

4.5G speed: Gbps becomes the new reference rate

In fact, from the 2G to 3G era, and from the 3G to 4G era, the most intuitive experience that mobile communication technology brings to us is speed! This tradition was also passed down in the 4.5 era – a new benchmark rate for Gbps.

I believe many of my friends know that the peak rate of 4G is about 150Mbps, and the peak rate of 4.5G is more than 1Gbps, which is more than six times. At the same time, the average capacity of 4G single station is about 100Mbps. The 4.5G single station capacity can be increased to about 600Mbps, which is also increased by 6 times. In addition, 4.5G also promotes the cell edge rate increase. Compared with the edge rate of 4G, the 4.5G cell edge rate can be increased by 10 times.

It is with this speed improvement that 4.5G can better support new services such as 2K/4K video, virtual reality, augmented reality, telemedicine, etc., especially for advanced applications such as virtual reality, which may require at least Gbps. The rate is guaranteed to be immersive, which means that only 4.5G can be met.

Demystifying Gbps new benchmark rate: need more technology to support

From 4G to 4.5G, and then to 5G, it is integrated with a variety of new wireless technologies and existing wireless technologies, that is, future networks include both new technology innovations and the evolution of existing technologies. The implementation of Gbps includes the support of 4*4 MIMO, 3D Beamforming, 4CC/5CC CA, 256QAM and other technologies.

With 4*4 MIMO technology, the base station can realize 4 channels of transmission, and the terminal can utilize the existing 2 channels of reception, and can also support the next 4 channels of reception, thus making full use of the spatial dimension and greatly improving the spectrum. Efficiency and power efficiency. At the same time, 256QAM can also increase the peak rate by 33% compared to 64QAM. The 3D Beaforming technology realizes the splitting of the cell beam in the vertical direction and the horizontal direction by the multi-antenna technology, thereby greatly enhancing the cell capacity and improving the cell edge. In addition, with the 4CC/5CC CA technology, by aggregating any 4 or 5 carriers, the peak rate of users is increased, and the cell edge rate and average rate are comprehensively improved.

Voice and video upgrade of 4.5G experience

I believe many of my friends know or have heard of the CS Fall Back (ie, the voice falls back to 2G/3G) solution at the beginning of LTE network construction. Simply put, users can't make voice calls and 4G high-speed data services at the same time. When a call is made (whether it is called or called), the user will fall back to the 3G or 2G voice network, and the call setup will be extended and the voice quality will be poor. The shortcomings will appear, seriously affecting the user experience in the 4G era.

It is precisely because of the CS Fall Back solution that the number of VoLTE users actually experienced in the 4G era is not much, and VoLTE has not been widely popularized. However, after entering the 4.5G era, users will quickly experience the advantages of VoLTE and get a better voice experience - Always On LTE, Always On MOS 4.0, Always Online.

VoLTE requires MOS4.0

Among them, Always On LTE and Always Online understand very well that they always use LTE network and the data service is not interrupted. What does Always On MOS4.0 mean? In fact, MOS is a widely recognized quality subjective measurement method for traditional voice services, and Always On MOS4.0, MOS must reach the 4.0 standard in VoLTE applications.

Of course, in the 4.5G era, not only the voice experience can reach the MOS4.0 level, but also the video experience (ie, vMOS, ITU and other related organizations are promoting its standardization. Currently, it has entered the model selection stage, and the first stage standardization result is expected to be released in 2016) The same can be achieved with the 4.0 standard. Not only allows end users to get an immersive HD experience, but also responds to the wide application of 2K/4K screens in terminal devices.

4.5G will accelerate the arrival of the Internet of Things era

After the current era of mobile Internet and cloud computing, we are about to usher in the Internet of Things era. The Internet of Things is very different from the current Internet-based Internet. A large number of applications are based on sensors connected to physical terminals, such as in daily life such as pet tracking, or vertical industries such as industrial manufacturing, asset tracking, etc. A LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) network is needed to form a wide-coverage public network. For this reason, NB-IoT (Narrowband Cellular Internet of Things) emerged in the 4.5G era.

4.5G with NB-IoT can achieve 20dB-30dB coverage enhancement (compared to GSM), which can achieve 100,000 connections per cell; while low power consumption can support terminal battery life of up to 5-10 years, and as low as 1 US dollar The cost of the chip. It is not difficult to see that 4.5G can meet the needs of a large number of terminal access, which will also accelerate the arrival of the Internet of Things era.

Why should operators choose 4.5G instead of directly upgrading to 5G?

It is not difficult to see through the introduction that 4.5G has a clear advantage over 4G in terms of speed, application experience, and support for the Internet of Things. However, for the operators who have just completed 4G network construction, these advantages are still difficult to drive them to evolve to 4.5G, because they must consider investment and return, consider why upgrade to 4.5G, why not upgrade directly to 5G, etc. problem! Let's talk about it specifically: