At MWC Shanghai in late June, Huawei held its Products and Solutions Innovations Launch. The event showcased some of the firm’s solutions to help operators approach technological challenges and build better development road maps. It was also an opportunity for the firm to demonstrate thought leadership in areas like 5G, sustainability, green networking and digital transformation.
The opening presentation from Gan Bin, vice president and chief marketing officer of Huawei’s wireless product line, set the scene by proposing the concept of 5GigaGreen. The term describes a series of innovations for wireless communications to drive network performance, as well as yielding energy savings for operators. Huawei views this as a crucial transformational platform and the next phase of 5G, based on the principle of “zero bit, zero watt” networks, which promotes more energy-efficient networks (for more on that, see Mobile Industry Goes Green in Face of Soaring Use).
For example, when building mobile networks that combine multiple spectrum bands, Huawei advocates an ultra-wideband, multi-antenna solution with maximized passive capability so it doesn’t need signal amplification — which consumes power. The firm’s 4T4R remote radio unit combines multiple spectrum bands into one, claiming to offer energy savings of more than 20% compared with the industry average. This means that a site in Europe going from four to six bands could reduce its energy usage by 30%.
The “zero bits, zero watts” mantra was applied to other aspects of Huawei’s ultra-wideband portfolio, namely:
- MetaAAU, an advanced antenna unit that now delivers what Huawei claims is the industry’s largest bandwidth — 800 MHz. It also reduces power usage by 20% more than using two separate 400 MHz modules
- A new two-transistor microwave outdoor unit, which enables aggregation of more carriers to deliver 800 MHz bandwidth, promising to cut power consumption by 50% compared with the industry average
- LampSite, Huawei’s small cell product that now enables 2 GHz bandwidth and lowers entire-site power usage by 40%.
To support new uses and traffic growth, 5G needs to deliver enhanced network performance, but this can’t come at the cost of increased energy usage. The radio access network (RAN) is the most power-hungry part of the mobile network, so it’s encouraging to see radio product development that tackles both requirements and proves they’re not mutually exclusive (see also Reducing RAN Energy Usage with Artificial Intelligence).
Huawei emphasized power-saving capabilities across the whole mobile network, showcasing its advances in hardware and software design to achieve “deep dormancy” — essentially turning down network resources when they’re not needed — with a 99% shutdown ratio, cutting equipment operating power to less than 5 W. When users need those resources, the network’s on-demand algorithm wakes up the equipment instantly.
Huawei’s iPowerStar is another example of this focus on network-level energy-saving features. The product implements intelligent orchestration based on traffic characteristics, energy efficiency and experience grids on multiband networks to apply an optimal strategy for each cell site based on current usage. As a deployment example, a network using iPowerStar in Hebei, China reduced energy usage by 19% during the May Day holiday despite a 19% increase in traffic volume.
The theme of network intelligence was reinforced, not just as a means of driving energy efficiency, but as a way for operators to extract the full potential from 5G networks. Intelligence resides in the core, which, as the “brains” of the network, plays a vital role in reducing network complexity and enabling quality of experience. This was encapsulated in Huawei’s release of its IntelligentCore practices.
George Gao, president of Huawei’s cloud core network product line, described the IntelligentCore solution as being designed to enable operators “to build intelligent, simplified, flexible networks, stimulate service innovation, enable experience monetization and fast-track 5G business success”. Our latest survey of 5G service providers flags how tough it’s been for many telecom operators to generate revenue from 5G, because the lack of network flexibility limits service options, resulting in lack-lustre user experiences (see Survey: Service Provider 5G Strategies, 2022-2023).
Making 5G profitable isn’t simple — it entails profound business transformation for the operator, so network suppliers need to offer a more consultative approach on top of their products. In response, Huawei hasn’t only introduced intelligence into its core network solutions, but engaged with operators to drive innovation based on new core capabilities, including:
- New Calling. Huawei’s intelligent media engine uses a plug-in media architecture and integrates graphic and video processing algorithms to realize network-native intelligence for in-depth media processing, evolving call services from voice-only to richer, video-based experiences
- Vivision. Powered by an intelligent 2D-to-3D conversion engine, Vivision significantly reduces the cost of producing 3D videos. One customer, Zhejiang Mobile, has used it to automatically convert more than 100 movies into 3D, allowing users to obtain an immersive video experience on different types of terminal
- Intelligent traffic express (ITE). Using intelligent networking, service awareness, experience analysis and scheduling acceleration, Huawei’s ITE solution is designed to help operators deliver differentiated user experiences and extract revenue from them. Piloted at Zhejiang Mobile, ITE doubled bandwidth for live TV services and reduced latency by 25% to 45%
- Autonomous driving network. Huawei’s core network solution uses artificial intelligence architecture and combines digital twinning, intelligent model learning, surge simulation and flow control optimization to identify network risks before they become problematic. This enables operators to shift from passive response to active prevention.
There was plenty more highlighted at the event, such as optical networking, storage and digitally managed network services. But two themes were ever-present: reducing energy usage while enhancing performance, and providing operators with the tools to create innovative services. The key to 5G profitability lies in the combination of these factors.
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