Tuesday 30 June 2020

QCell - ZTE’s 5G Solution for Gigabit Indoor User Experience

ZTE unveiled its 5G RAN product portfolio for the 'Networks of the Future' back in February, just in time for the MWC that was unfortunately cancelled. One of the products was QCell.

ZTE’s QCell 5G indoor solution provides not only multi-mode, multi-frequency, ultrawide-bandwidth and large-capacity 4TR products, but also a more budget-friendly 2TR product that supports 300 MHz bandwidth, which is ideal for indoor RAN sharing and rapid introduction of 5G with lower deployment cost.

Yesterday, ZTE announced that along with the Jiangsu branch of China Telecom, they have deployed 5G 200 MHz Qcell 4T4R digital indoor distribution system in the indoor scenarios with high amounts of data traffic, such as shopping malls and subway stations, in Xuzhou, China. The system provides high-quality 5G indoor coverage, and accelerates future 5G indoor system deployment.


This commercial deployment has employed ZTE’s latest 5G Qcell ultra-wideband product series, which supports 200MHz continuous ultra-large bandwidth at 3.5 GHz frequency band, and 100MHz+100MHZ dual-carrier aggregation technology that doubles download rate. 

 For the time being, by virtue of China Telecom’s 100MHz 5G bandwidth, the single 5G user download rate has turned out to exceed 1 Gbps. In case of the activation of 200 MHz bandwidth in the future, the single 5G user download rate will exceed 2 Gbps, providing an excellent 5G experience. 

 Moving forward, ZTE will give full play to its technical and commercial advantages in the 5G field, continue to work closely with China Telecom to build high-quality 5G digital indoor networks, and develop 5G industrial applications, thereby facilitating the development of smart cities.

A partner feature on Mobile World Live provides a lot more technical details:

The ZTE QCell system consists of pRRU/pBridge/BBU (Baseband Unit) 3-level equipment. The 3-level efficient architecture supports the rapid cabling of CAT6a network cables or optical-electrical hybrid cables. It supports pBridge multi-level cascading, cell splitting and combination, and can rapidly respond to the operator’s requirements for the complex networking of different frequency bands and systems, rapid adjustment and flexible expansion of capacity and coverage.

 The 300 MHz large bandwidth products with multi-mode and multi-frequency band enable the ZTE QCell solution the powerful network architecture integration capability, to meet the requirements of multi-operator’s co-building and sharing and have the compatibility and adaptability of global deployment. It not only supports the overlay networking of the existing DAS and 5G QCell, but also supports the feed-in of the GSM/UMTS DAS RF signals from different manufacturers in the existing network through the MAU, to protect the operator’s existing indoor distribution investment and introduce value-added services based on 5G coverage and precise positioning. QCell supports GSM/CDMA/UMTS/FDD LTE/TDD LTE/5G NR, which makes once deployment to implement the multi-operator/multi-band/multi-system indoor distribution system that achieves agile, long-term, co-construction, sharing, and lowest cost indoor distribution network, multi-system equipment and common management and maintenance. It only needs software upgrade for service expansion and network architecture evolution in the future so as to protect the investment in early-stage 5G indoor deployment and reduce the overall TCO cost from the perspective of long-term operation.

 ZTE adopts innovative design of QCell products to reduce the cost and power consumption of equipment units. The pRRU transceiving channel not only supports high-performance 4T4R, but also supports low-cost 2T2R, further reducing the cost and power consumption. The pBridge enhanced product is designed to reduce the cost and power consumption after the electrical interface and optical interface are separated and the SoC solution is introduced. Moreover, the simplest BBU product is introduced to further reduce the QCell system networking cost.

 The hierarchical QCell networking well matches diverse scenarios

 Based on the analysis of the requirements for indoor distribution of operators, vertical industry enterprises, and large business owners, the indoor distribution scenarios can be divided into three types: capacity-sensitive scenario (type A), capacity and coverage balancing scenario (type B), and coverage-sensitive scenario (type C).

 For the above three types of scenarios, ZTE provides hierarchical QCell networking solutions. Compared with the Benchmark QCell solution of 4T4R built-in antenna pRRU, ZTE provides a cost reduction solution of 2T2R built-in antenna pRRU and a low cost solution of 4T4R pRRU+ connected with external DAS antenna according to the scenario requirements, thus achieving the accurate network construction and saving operators’ investment. Evaluations based on the 40,000 square meters isolated indoor distribution scenario show: for scenario type B, the total main equipment investment is reduced by about 1/4; for scenario type C, through the external DAS antenna, the single-pRRU coverage area is greatly expanded and the overall investment is greatly reduced by about 1/2.

 Extensive QCell Digital Smart Indoor Application, Making 5G Service Ubiquitous

 The QCell digital intelligent indoor distribution system can be deployed for indoor and semi-indoor to achieve wireless coverage and service provision in high-value areas, such as large traffic hub, large stadiums, CBD and university campuses.

 The large-scale traffic hub scenarios, such as airports, railway stations, and subway stations, have a large area and high population density, and are high-value areas for operators to guarantee both coverage and performance. The Wi-Fi system of most transportation hubs is often limited in capacity and cannot meet passengers’ requirements for future 4K/8K HD video. In Changsha Huanghua Airport, ZTE deployed the indoor high-capacity digital intelligent QCell solution with high-density networking and the first 3-carrier aggregation technology in China, to achieve the throughput of 8400Mbps for the airport. The solution supports 3,500 people simultaneously to enjoy HD video smoothly. At present, the QCell solution has been widely used in various metropolitan airports and railway hub stations, including Changsha Airport in Hunan, Xiaoshan Airport in Hangzhou, Nanjing South Station and Xining Railway Station, serving millions of passengers. Nanjing South Railway Station has a total building area of 45.8 million square meters, which is the largest railway station in Asia. After QCell is deployed, the SINR is increased by 13% and the throughput is increased by 91.8%.

 The large stadiums, such as stadiums and exhibition halls, have a large number of users and a huge amount of data volume in a centralized manner. The QCell solution supports vertical partitioning to achieve seamless multi-layer coverage from the upper stands, the middle mezzanines to the bottom passages. At present, the QCell solution has been widely deployed in large stadiums such as Hangzhou Olympic Center, Hangzhou Expo Center, Suzhou International Expo Center, and Shenzhen New High-Tech Center. In August 2019, the ZTE 5G Smart Digital Indoor Division QCell solution covered many important sports venues including the Main Conference venue of the Red Lantern Stadium for the second National Youth Games (Shanxi), and made the Game the first “5G Games” in China. Through such technologies as MEC deployment and low delay coding, the ZTE 5G Smart stadium solution reduces the end-to-end live broadcast delay to 1 second, and provides audience with the excellent experience comparable to watching on the spot. In addition, ZTE also provides audience with brand-new experience in three 5G scenarios: immersive viewing experience from multi-angle live streaming, “Flexible Zooming” and “360-degree Free View” services. As an iconic application in the Game, the 5G Smart Stadium Solution provided an excellent demonstration for the live broadcast of sports events.

A recent promo video of QCell is embedded below:




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Wednesday 24 June 2020

Edge Computing and the Future of Small Cell Networks


Small Cell Forum (SCF) recently published report setting out how edge computing will impact the future of small cell networks, with particular focus on private 4G / 5G cellular networks. A survey of service providers for the paper showed that by 2025 almost 75% new indoor small cell deployments will be co-located with edge and/or private EPC. The paper (SCF 234) is available to download here.

The press release on this stated:

Edge Computing and Small Cell Networks identifies core synergies between edge computing (EC) and small cell networks (SCNs) and highlights how those synergies are present across multiple domains – business, technical, deployment, product and vendor ecosystems.

 It describes how the benefits of small cells co-located with edge can be applied to commercial and operational advantage in key industry segments, such as automation and Industry 4.0, worksites, mission critical services, enterprises and public safety. The paper looks in detail at the architectures and deployment considerations for edge and small cells in three premises-based use cases:
  • Fully private cellular networks (PCNs)
  • PCNs that have a roaming relationship with MNO networks
  • PCNS integrated with MNO networks

While small cells and edge computing have significant potential to meet enterprise demand and drive new business models for service providers, best practice needs to be agreed and adopted, and technical barriers/gaps addressed to optimize that potential for both enterprises and service providers. Key areas of focus include:
  • Edge network recommendations: For edge computing solutions, the ‘edge network’ has to work in concert with the ‘core network’ via open interfaces and APIs to enable true multi-vendor ecosystem. SCF believes that current specifications are incomplete and need enhancements.
  • Edge platform services and applications recommendations: Open and consistent APIs across multiple organizations must evolve and align to enable a broad ecosystem of edge platform services and edge applications.
  • EC platform solution recommendations: Blueprints/reference-designs/solutions for open-source edge computing platforms are urgently required for rapid growth of the EC ecosystem.
  • EC and small cell recommendations: Design/deployment blueprints must be available for core use cases to best leverage small cell/edge synergies to deliver multiple benefits: shared virtualized implementations leading to cost efficiencies; integrated network functions & mutually beneficial analytics (radio environment, RAN characteristics, location etc.) leading to advanced functionalities to the edge computing platforms.
  • EC infrastructure recommendations: In determining the COTS hardware for optimal edge computing infrastructure, service providers and enterprises shouldn’t be tempted to reinvent the wheel. There are already robust guidelines for data center & hardware design & implementations from TIA, BICSI and OCP that should be followed.

‘The benefits of edge computing are well known, but what we have begun to demonstrate with this work is that small cells and edge will be critical for enabling service providers and enterprises to realize new profitable service opportunities,’ said Dr. Prabhakar Chitrapu, Chair of Small Cell Forum. ‘Small cells plus edge will also enable new business models for a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including edge infrastructure, edge network and edge platform as a service, as well as direct edge application services to subscribers, enterprises and service providers.’

 Going forward, working in collaboration with other relevant Industry Forums, SCF will lead the development of a set of harmonized and consistent set of application, network & system-level APIs to enable small cell networks to facilitate EC services and applications.

 SCF will also spearhead the deployment of design blueprints for core use cases, leveraging small cell/edge synergies and open source environments.

 The research was made possible by an extended collaboration of leading MNOs, OEMs and Infrastructure providers, brought together by Small Cell Forum, including; American Tower, AT&T, Crown Castle, Druid, Intel, Nokia and Reliance Jio.

A video by Small Cell Forum provides a bit more background of this new Edge Computing and Small Cell Networks whitepaper:



Edge computing is a hot topic and every time we have posted something, we have got a lot of engagement on the topic.



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Tuesday 16 June 2020

ZTE 'Unisite+' helps accelerate co-site deployment of 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G with fewer devices

One of the things ZTE had planned to show during MWC 2020 is a more 'Capable', 'Compact' and 'Faster' 5G RAN Product Portfolio for the Networks of the Future. While we missed out on that, here is once such product called 'Unisite+'

Pic source: Mobile World Live

ZTE describes this as:

Driven by the idea of maximizing RATs, bands and capacity with as few devices as possible, ZTE has launched UniSite+, the upgraded version of its UniSite solution. The A + P design enables replacing all the antennas and adding a new 5G AAU all by just one single radio unit. The active part of the solution offers flexible options between 64TR and 32TR over N78, N41, and N79 bands, and the passive part offers 14 ports and supports all sub-3GHz frequency bands. 

 The solution employs two tri-band UBR (Ultra Broadband Radio) products, the industry’s first 1.8G+2.1G+2.6G product, and the 700M+800M+900M with the industry’s largest capacity and smallest form factor. 

 By deploying the UniSite+ solution, the operators can easily realize "1 + 2 = 7," the concept of using one antenna and two radio units to support 7-band all-RAT deployment. Therefore, it is the simplest site solution in the industry which reduces the number of required devices by more than 70%.

 In addition to radio simplification, the latest baseband technology is also now at another superb level. ZTE has launched the industry's first all-RAT baseband board, which supports 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G in one board to facilitate “site-intervention-free” for 5G evolution.

 While the radio sites get greatly simplified, ZTE has also reduced the power consumption of the equipment by 30% with new-generation chipsets and high-efficiency power amplifiers. 

 To meet the requirements of 5G transmission, the UniSite+ solution also includes the latest microwave products with a transmission capacity up to 25 Gbps and improved latency performance. In addition, the solution can work with the ordinary frequency band microwave of a 3rd-party solution to form a Multiband group, thereby providing the best MPLS/SDN network upgrade solution to maximize the return on investment of operators.

Here are couple of videos in the playlist, one recent one about Unisite+ and the other is about Unisite from last year that provides background to this.



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Friday 12 June 2020

IOWN - Innovative Optical and Wireless Network

If you are not watching the optical networking space, chances are you have not heard of this Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) initiative which was proposed by NTT and is now being standardised by IOWN Global Forum.


NTT Technical Review published a detailed article on this topic earlier this year. The following is from the article:

To create an affluent and diverse society, NTT has proposed the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) concept, which is a new communication infrastructure that can provide high-speed broadband communication and enormous computing resources by using innovative technologies including optical technologies. NTT also believes that these innovative technologies can optimize society as a whole and individuals using all types of information. IOWN uses three elements, All-Photonics Network, Digital Twin Computing, and Cognitive Foundation® to create a smart world, as shown below (Fig. 3).

  • Dramatic reduction in power consumption and broadening of communication bandwidth can provide enormous processing capacity for the explosive increase in computational complexity.
  • By increasing the capacity and reducing the delay of communications, it is possible to share in real time huge amounts of information collected from various sensors, exceeding the five senses.
  • Dedicated use of optical wavelengths provides a high level of confidentiality and stability and can be used for mission-critical services.
  • Multi-orchestration capabilities for centralized management of various resources, enabling resource utilization across industrial and regional domains
  • The creation of a cyberspace that replicates and expands the real world by combining various digital twins and human models


 All-Photonics Network

 As the number of people and things connected to a network increase, advanced, complex, and large-scale information processing such as for AI will require a vast amount of power consumption. To reduce such power consumption and meet mission critical service requirements, NTT applies photonics technologies to end-to-end environments for achieving ultra-low-power consumption, large-capacity, and low-delay networks. For example, NTT aims to increase power efficiency 100 fold by developing transmission devices that control optical wavelengths and photonics-electronics convergence devices. NTT also aims to expand transmission capacity 125 fold by increasing multiplexing in optical fibers and expanding multicores in a fiber (Fig. 4).

Digital Twin Computing

 A digital twin is an image of real-world objects, such as production machines, aircraft engines, and automobiles in factories, by mapping their shapes, conditions, and functions into cyberspace and expressing them accurately. Using digital twins enables us to analyze the current situation, predict the future, and simulate objects in cyberspace.

 Digital Twin Computing is a new computing paradigm that makes it possible to reproduce and simulate the interaction between things and people freely in cyberspace by conducting computations such as exchange, fusion, duplication, and synthesis for many digital twins representing the real world.

 Cognitive Foundation®

 To achieve low-power-consumption, high-capacity, high-quality communication networks and large-scale interactions between people and objects, it is necessary to select and use various resources appropriately. The Cognitive Foundation is an infrastructure that provides a set of functions necessary to build and operate services by using various methods of collecting, processing, storing, and communicating data scattered throughout various locations.


NTT recently released Technology Report for Smart World 2020 which introduces 11 technologies that they think are crucial to thinking about the changing world ahead. According to them, these technologies are the focus of their own research and development efforts, and are also being vigorously pursued around the world. Some of these technologies are key components of IOWN, while others can be expected to see wide adoption as a result of IOWN according to the report.

Back in April, IOWN GF unveiled its Vision 2030 White Paper. With artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented realities, 5G, dynamic computing scaling, blockchain and other advanced technologies on the verge of becoming part of the daily lives for billions of people, IOWN GF’s Vision 2030 is to define and build a global communications infrastructure over the next decade capable of sustainably maximizing the benefits these new technologies offer society and businesses. The hope is to create a smarter world where technology is used more naturally and becomes more pervasive for all. Download the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum Vision 2030 and Technical Directions White Paper here.



Finally, the videos will provide a much clearer idea about the vision of IOWN. As always, feel free to provide your insights in the comments below.
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Wednesday 3 June 2020

NEC's 5G Antenna-equipped Smart Street Lighting to be Trialled in Tokyo

Smart poles and lamp posts are popular topic in this blog. You will find links of many examples at the bottom of this post. NEC has a Smart Street Lighting solution that is designed with smart cities in mind. You can read more about it here.

In a recent press release, it announced: 

Sumitomo Corporation has concluded an agreement with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government on the preliminary/trial installation and verification of smart poles being carried out by the government. Together with NEC Corporation, Sumitomo Corporation intends to install two types of smart poles in the Nishi-shinjuku area of Tokyo by the end of June 2020.

In its "TOKYO Data Highway Basic Strategy" formulated in August 2019, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government calls for constructing an ultra-high-speed mobile Internet network in Tokyo. As part of that effort, the government is looking to install smart poles at an early date in the Nishi-shinjuku area, a priority improvement zone. Smart poles are multi-functional poles equipped with communication base stations, Wi-Fi, street lighting, signage, etc., and they are expected to serve as infrastructure useful for the provision of new community services.


In partnering with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Sumitomo Corporation and NEC will be installing two types of smart poles in the Nishi-shinjuku area by the end of June 2020 to verify their utility under both ordinary and emergency circumstances. More specifically, the two companies plan to install two models of NEC's "Smart Street Lighting" equipped with functions such as digital signage and pedestrian traffic flow analysis cameras; one model will be outfitted with a 5G shared antenna system for joint use by multiple telecommunications carriers, while the other, a site-sharing model, will be equipped with 5G base stations for multiple telecommunications carriers. With the aim of bringing 5G shared antenna systems into full-scale use by March 2021, efforts will be made to extend these systems across the entire metropolis and to help develop services for Tokyo residents/visitors through the construction of efficient infrastructure by accumulating knowledge on the installation and operation of smart poles.

 Sumitomo Corporation is engaged in a variety of information and telecommunications endeavors, being involved with the cable television business in Japan and investing in telecommunications and telecommunication tower businesses overseas. In the 5G sector, it has taken part in 5G base station sharing verification projects alongside Tokyu Corporation, Osaka Metro Co., Ltd., and Tokyo's Minato Ward. In addition to advancing the "TOKYO Data Highway Basic Strategy" through this latest agreement, Sumitomo Corporation will in the future be collaborating with companies, local governments and others to create 5G-related businesses.

 NEC has positioned the public safety business as an engine for its global growth, and this verification project will accelerate and enhance the development of solutions and services to realize "NEC Safer Cities", while helping to create safer and more secure streets.

A concept video explaining how NEC's Smart Street Lighting will be used in future cities as follows:




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